It is always a challenge to appear on feature programs of WION, India’s premier English-language global broadcaster.

The display of newly arrived F-16s on Ukrainian territory was the subject of the day in my 12-minute chat on WION yesterday.

Considering that the half dozen or more WION newscasts yesterday about the American jets ran no longer than 2 minutes each, I was especially appreciative of the opportunity to delve into the broader context of these planes finally coming into Ukrainian hands.

I opened my discussion with WION’s presenter Shivan Chanana by making reference to Swiss military expert Jacques Baud’s overarching view of the objectives of the U.S. and NATO in assisting Ukraine in their fight with Russia: namely to use Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia to inflict a humiliating defeat on the Kremlin that might precipitate regime change and the eventual break-up of the Russian Federation. At a minimum, their objective is to get Russia bogged down in Ukraine so that it cannot respond to other global challenges and so give the U.S. a free hand to perpetuate its global hegemony. To achieve this, the war in Ukraine must be drawn out as long as possible. This is why NATO ‘s deliveries of military hardware to Kiev have repeatedly and consistently been ’too little, too late.’  Such is the situation with respect to the F-16s.

Recovering Ukrainian land and sovereignty is a secondary or tertiary consideration of the Western powers. The massive losses that Ukraine is experiencing in men and materiel count for nothing. Hence, U.S. indifference to what is becoming a genocide in Ukraine as ever younger ‘recruits’ to its military forces deplete the country’s reproductive stock.

For those of you unfamiliar with Baud, I heartily recommend that you look him up in Amazon and acquire his latest of several books about the conflict. In my estimation he is the most authoritative of all the Western commentators about the war from the standpoint of military science.  In that connection, I eagerly look forward to joining Baud in a three-man Round Table discussion of the BRICS Summit, and of the Ukraine war as well, that will take place in Greater Brussels on 26 October. For anyone interested in attending a live as opposed to virtual discussion of these key issues in geopolitics, please feel free to contact me directly for details.

I will not set out here the course of my discussion with Shivan Chanana. In due course, a full transcript will be appended to this report when I receive it from a loyal volunteer.

I close this note by mentioning the latest evaluation of Ukraine’s chances of maintaining its fight into the late autumn coming from panelists on the widely viewed and very well informed Russian state television talk show The Great Game per last night’s edition: https://rutube.ru/video/2cedd7b3f68ed9ebdbc4a730ff8fd686/

In short, thanks to enormous exertions of its recruitment officials patrolling the streets of all cities and towns, the Ukrainian army is scooping up about 30,000 new recruits per month, giving them one week (!) of training and sending them to the front. This number roughly corresponds to the number of Ukrainian soldiers and officers killed or seriously injured and withdrawn from combat in the same time period.  Given that training for a live war normally takes 60 days, those who are being sent to the front today cannot make a serious contribution on the field of battle and are just cannon fodder.

Meanwhile, there is widespread discussion in the Ukrainian media about the numbers of conscript age men (18 – 59) who are actively evading the recruiters by going into hiding or fleeing abroad. These range from several hundred thousand to 800,000. That tells you a lot about the enthusiasm level of the broad Ukrainian population for continuing the fight against Moscow.  Polls also indicate that over the past year there has been a dramatic increase in the percent of the population wanting to end the war now while accepting the permanent loss of the territory that Russia has captured.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus) followed by full transcript in English, followed by a translation of the transcript into German

Kann die Ukraine die russische Luftverteidigung mit F16 zerstören? | WION GAME PLAN

Es ist immer eine Herausforderung, in den Sendungen von WION, Indiens wichtigstem englischsprachigen Fernsehsender, aufzutreten.

Die Präsentation der neu eingetroffenen F-16-Kampfjets auf ukrainischem Gebiet war das Thema des Tages in meinem gestrigen 12-minütigen Chat auf WION.

In Anbetracht der Tatsache, dass die mehr als ein halbes Dutzend Nachrichtensendungen von WION über die amerikanischen Jets gestern jeweils nicht länger als zwei Minuten dauerten, war ich besonders dankbar für die Gelegenheit, den breiteren Kontext dieser Flugzeuge, die schließlich in ukrainische Hände gelangt sind, zu beleuchten.

Zu Beginn meines Gesprächs mit WION-Moderator Shivan Chanana verwies ich auf die übergreifende Sichtweise des Schweizer Militärexperten Jacques Baud zu den Zielen der USA und der NATO bei der Unterstützung der Ukraine in ihrem Kampf gegen Russland: nämlich die Ukraine als Rammbock gegen Russland zu benutzen, um dem Kreml eine demütigende Niederlage zuzufügen, die einen Regimewechsel und den schließlichen Zerfall der Russischen Föderation herbeiführen sollte. Ihr Ziel ist es zumindest, Russland in der Ukraine festzufahren, damit es nicht auf andere globale Herausforderungen reagieren kann und die USA freie Hand haben, ihre globale Hegemonie aufrechtzuerhalten. Um dies zu erreichen, muss der Krieg in der Ukraine so lange wie möglich in die Länge gezogen werden. Aus diesem Grund waren die NATO-Lieferungen von Militärgütern an Kiew wiederholt und konsequent “zu wenig und zu spät”. Dies ist auch bei den F-16 der Fall.

Die Rückgewinnung von ukrainischem Territorium und der ukrainischen Souveränität ist für die Westmächte eine zweit- oder drittrangige Überlegung. Die massiven Verluste, die die Ukraine an Menschen und Material erleidet, zählen nicht. Daher die Gleichgültigkeit der USA gegenüber dem, was sich in der Ukraine zu einem Genocid entwickelt, da immer jüngere “Rekruten” für ihre Streitkräfte den Reproduktionsbestand des Landes dezimieren.

Denjenigen unter Ihnen, die Baud nicht kennen, empfehle ich wärmstens, ihn bei Amazon aufzusuchen und sein neuestes von mehreren Büchern über den Konflikt zu erwerben. Meiner Meinung nach ist er von allen westlichen Kommentatoren des Krieges aus militärwissenschaftlicher Sicht der maßgebliche Autor. In diesem Zusammenhang freue ich mich sehr darauf, mit Baud an einer dreiköpfigen Diskussionsrunde über den BRICS-Gipfel und auch über den Ukraine-Krieg teilzunehmen, die am 26. Oktober im Großraum Brüssel stattfinden wird. Wer Interesse hat, an einer Live-Diskussion über diese geopolitischen Schlüsselthemen teilzunehmen, kann sich gerne direkt an mich wenden, um Einzelheiten zu erfahren.

Ich werde hier nicht den Verlauf meines Gesprächs mit Shivan Chanana wiedergeben. Zu gegebener Zeit werde ich diesem Bericht eine vollständige Abschrift beifügen, sobald ich sie von einem loyalen Freiwilligen erhalte.

Abschließend möchte ich auf die jüngste Einschätzung der Chancen der Ukraine, ihren Kampf bis in den Spätherbst hinein fortzusetzen, hinweisen, die von den Diskussionsteilnehmern der weithin sichtbaren und sehr gut informierten Talkshow des russischen Staatsfernsehens “Das grosse Spiel” in der gestrigen Abendausgabe abgegeben wurde: https://rutube.ru/video/2cedd7b3f68ed9ebdbc4a730ff8fd686/

Kurz gesagt, dank der enormen Anstrengungen ihrer Rekrutierungsbeamten, die in allen Städten und Gemeinden auf der Straße patrouillieren, sammelt die ukrainische Armee jeden Monat etwa 30.000 neue Rekruten ein, bildet sie eine Woche (!) lang aus und schickt sie an die Front. Diese Zahl entspricht in etwa der Zahl der ukrainischen Soldaten und Offiziere, die im gleichen Zeitraum getötet oder schwer verletzt und aus dem Kampf zurückgezogen wurden. Wenn man bedenkt, dass die Ausbildung für einen echten Krieg normalerweise 60 Tage dauert, können diejenigen, die heute an die Front geschickt werden, keinen ernsthaften Beitrag auf dem Schlachtfeld leisten und sind nur Kanonenfutter.

Inzwischen wird in den ukrainischen Medien viel über die Zahl der Männer im wehrpflichtigen Alter (18-59 Jahre) diskutiert, die sich den Rekrutierern aktiv entziehen, indem sie untertauchen oder ins Ausland fliehen. Die Angaben reichen von mehreren hunderttausend bis zu 800.000. Das sagt viel über die Begeisterung der breiten ukrainischen Bevölkerung für die Fortsetzung des Kampfes gegen Moskau aus. Aus Umfragen geht auch hervor, dass im letzten Jahr der Anteil der Bevölkerung, der den Krieg jetzt beenden will, dramatisch angestiegen ist, wobei er den dauerhaften Verlust der von Russland eroberten Gebiete in Kauf nimmt.

Transcript

Shivan Chanana, WION: 0:00
Ukraine has received 10 F-16 fighters from Western countries, and by the end of the year their number will increase to 20. That’s what is expected. Now Kiev hopes that the new fighter jets will help beat Russian forces or at least push them back, allowing them to regain air dominance on the war front. This is what Ukraine expects. What’s Ukraine’s F-16 game plan? Can they get past Russia’s formidable air defense systems?

Welcome to “Game Plan”. I’m Shivan Chanana. To discuss this further, we’re being joined by Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, international affairs analyst, author and historian, joining us from Brussels. Dr. Doctorow, always a pleasure speaking with you. Do you feel F-16s will make a difference in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 0:41
No, and it’s not my personal opinion. I think there’s a consensus of expert opinion that the effect on Ukraine’s defense and attack possibilities from the acquisition of these several F-16s will be nil. I can get into why that is so in a moment, but I’d like to look at the bigger issue. That is, what is NATO doing in and through Ukraine? And here I make reference to a well-known Swiss military expert, Jacques Baud, who has from the beginning held the opinion that the NATO approach to Ukraine is to use the country as a battering ram against Russia.

And NATO from the very beginning of this conflict, going back to February 2022, was never interested in Ukraine winning the battle and freeing its territory. Its only interest was in causing maximal damage to Russia, hopefully inflicting a humiliating defeat in one way or another on Russia, and thereby precipitating a regime change in Moscow and the eventual breakup of the Russian Federation. This is what he has said, and I subscribe fully to that as the overarching explanation of what has been going on. If Ukraine is battered, if Ukraine suffers enormous human and material losses as has been the case, that is of no concern to its backers or nominal backers in the United States and NATO.

2:13
So, the acquisition of these F-16s is put in this overall context of always too little, too late, always under-equipped, because the victory of Ukraine is not what is the objective. Drawing out the conflict, bleeding Russia, hopefully bringing Russia into a swamp of of long-term warfare with Ukraine that distracts Russia from the other geopolitical challenges that it faces across the globe.

WION: 2:49
Dr. Doctorow, now as far as the larger vision behind this Russia-Ukraine war is concerned, from NATO’s side or from the West’s side, of course there are varying opinions. If you ask someone from the West or rather from the US or who understands or backs NATO’s understanding, they will perhaps say that they are trying to keep Russia from invading and rather they want to get Russia out of Ukraine, and that’s why they’re arming Ukraine with the F-16s. But Ukraine from its perspective will be using the F-16s to the best that they can. Do you feel Ukraine will have to destroy Russian air defences to make the F-16s effective? And when I say Russian air defences, can they get past the likes of Russia’s S-300, S-400, S-500, their formidable air defense systems.

Doctorow: 3:37
Well I think you know the answer to that, and it’s negative. Of course they can’t. As I said, it’s mission impossible for Ukraine. If these airplanes ever take off, it’ll be a miracle. The Russians know very well which [are] the remaining air bases on Ukrainian soil, where these can be based. Most people are pointing to the far west of Ukraine, the area close to the Rumanian border. The Russians also can read the map, and they know very well what bases they are left to attack to make it physically impossible for Ukrainians to fly these planes from their own territory.

What does that mean? It means that they would be flying them from Rumania or from Bulgaria or from Poland, and it invites the conflict to escalate to a direct Russian-NATO war. However, I doubt that things will reach that critical impasse, because the world has more than one hearth of conflict and military confrontation. And it may well be overtaken by a regional war in the Middle East or the Western Asia that becomes the new center of attention and of all military efforts for the United States and its allies, whereby Ukraine will fall to the rear and have less support and less global media attention than it does right now. We’ll see. But everything is going to play out in the immediate weeks before us. So what I am now prognosticating is not something for the distant future. It’s something that we will all watch closely in the days ahead.

WION: 5:27
Dr. Doctorow, now I just want to take from what you mentioned, that Russia knows exactly where their air bases are, and Russia has been targeting these bases that may house the F-16s and has vowed to shoot them down. I want to understand from you, do you feel this is a preemptive measure by Russia to avoid any damage which F-16s may cause to the Russian forces if they are used and deployed and if they take off?

Doctorow:
Well, there are multiple objectives on the Russian side. One of them is, as you say. The other is to humiliate the United States and to demonstrate that Russian hardware, including aircraft and air defences, are superior to anything that the United States is trying to sell abroad. I think that message already, at the present stage of the conflict, has been well established among global procurement officers for military equipment, including India’s own. The achievements of the Russian arms developers have been manifestly demonstrated, and the ability of Russia to adapt itself very quickly to the changing challenges on the battlefield with new equipment, with drones and other devices which were unknown to warfare two, three years ago. Russia has demonstrated an ability to master these skills, to implement and produce in numbers equipment that meets these challenges.

7:00
So Russia in every way has outperformed what the Pentagon and its allies in Western Europe have assumed was the case for Russia. So, on the level of global salesmanship of Russian military hardware, the experiments going on on Ukrainian territory, including what we are about to see as the likely destruction of F-16s on the ground, if not in the air, is in Russia’s favor.

As for changing the war, it is by general consensus of military experts, 10 airplanes, even 50 airplanes, will be meaningless in the ongoing conflict. The Russians have hundreds of planes, many of them high-performance, capable of shooting down the F-16s if there were ever to be a dogfight. But I don’t think it will get to that. I think these planes will more likely be destroyed by strikes of Iskandar or if necessary by hypersonic missile like Zircon or more likely Kinzhal before they ever leave leave the airport. I know very well that the United States and the Ukrainians are counting on the hardened nature of air bases that Ukraine inherited from its Soviet past. These were unusually well defended and with concrete bunkers, concrete hangars for planes. Nonetheless, Russia’s firepower with these hypersonic missiles is capable of defeating any of the existing air bases in Ukraine, not to mention the neighboring air bases in Rumania or Moldova.

WION: 8:59
Doctor, you mentioned that it will be a miracle if these fighter jets even take off. Now, I understand that you don’t think even, you know, that for them even flying within the country, even that is going to be a miracle. But as of now, it’s still unclear what missiles the F-16s will be equipped with or what missiles are being sent to Ukraine to arm the F-16s with. More importantly, what range will they have? Do you feel Ukraine would use these F-16s to target inside Russia, even if they take off and they’re within Ukrainian airspace?

Doctorow: 9:33
I think that’s the only interest that the Kiev authorities have in these planes. To talk about self-defense again, or they’re using them to destroy Russian air defenses is nonsensical. But the Ukrainians are hoping to use these planes to deliver long-range missiles, which, to the best of our knowledge, the United States has not yet authorized for equipping the F-16s. We’ll see. Everything is always a bit lagging.

10:05
The point about the the destruction of these planes on the ground is– we just have to remember what happened in the past week. It has not been a subject of discussion in major media in the West, but there are– in Russian media, there is discussion of the destructive attack using Kinzhal missiles on a rebuilt and revamped base west of Lvov, very close to Lvov, that was the host to numerous, dozens if not hundreds of NATO officers engaged in training and guiding the Ukrainian armed forces. If this base can have been so utterly destroyed, vaporizing, as they say, 200 or 300 officers, many of them senior NATO officials, then what is the chance of any F-16, based on anywhere in Ukrainian territory, evading the revenge attacks of the Russians? I think nil.

WION: 11:18
All right, Dr. Doctorow, thank you so much for sharing all your insights and sharing things that perhaps the regular public would not get to hear because majority of the narrative which goes out comes from the West. But this is a narrative which also needs to reach the ears of people who would be interested in matters and seeing where the Russia-Ukraine war is really heading. As of now, Ukraine has got 10 F-16s. They’re expecting more by the end of the year, and even more by next year. What kind of impact [will it] have on ground? As you mentioned earlier, we won’t need to wait too long to see that actually play out. Thank you so much for joining in on “Game Plan”. Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, international affairs analyst, author and historian, joining us from Brussels. Always a pleasure speaking with you, sir.

Doctorow: 12:00
Thanks so much to you.

Transkript

Shivan Chanana, WION: 0:00

Die Ukraine hat 10 F-16-Kampfflugzeuge aus westlichen Ländern erhalten, und bis Ende des Jahres wird sich ihre Zahl auf 20 erhöhen. Das ist die Erwartung. Nun hofft Kiew, dass die neuen Kampfflugzeuge dazu beitragen werden, die russischen Streitkräfte zu schlagen oder zumindest zurückzudrängen, so dass sie die Luftüberlegenheit an der Kriegsfront wiedererlangen können. Das ist es, was die Ukraine erwartet. Wie sieht der Plan der Ukraine für die F-16 aus? Können sie Russlands gewaltige Luftabwehrsysteme überwinden?

Willkommen zu “Game Plan”. Ich bin Shivan Chanana. Um dieses Thema weiter zu erörtern, haben wir Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, Analyst für internationale Angelegenheiten, Autor und Historiker, aus Brüssel zu Gast. Dr. Doctorow, es ist immer ein Vergnügen, mit Ihnen zu sprechen. Glauben Sie, dass die F-16 einen Unterschied im laufenden Krieg zwischen Russland und der Ukraine machen werden?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 0:41

Nein, und das ist nicht meine persönliche Meinung. Ich denke, es gibt einen Konsens unter den Experten, dass die Auswirkungen auf die Verteidigungs- und Angriffsmöglichkeiten der Ukraine durch die Anschaffung dieser F-16 gleich null sein werden. Ich kann gleich darauf eingehen, warum das so ist, aber ich möchte mich mit dem größeren Thema befassen. Das heißt, was tut die NATO in der und durch die Ukraine? Und hier beziehe ich mich auf einen bekannten Schweizer Militärexperten, Jacques Baud, der von Anfang an die Meinung vertreten hat, dass der Ansatz der NATO gegenüber der Ukraine darin besteht, das Land als Rammbock gegen Russland zu benutzen.

Und die NATO war von Beginn dieses Konflikts an, also seit Februar 2022, nie daran interessiert, dass die Ukraine die Schlacht gewinnt und ihr Territorium befreit. Ihr einziges Interesse bestand darin, Russland so viel Schaden wie möglich zuzufügen, Russland auf die eine oder andere Weise eine demütigende Niederlage beizubringen und dadurch einen Regimewechsel in Moskau und schließlich den Zusammenbruch der Russischen Föderation herbeizuführen. Das ist es, was er gesagt hat, und ich schließe mich dem voll und ganz an, da dies die übergreifende Erklärung für die Geschehnisse ist. Wenn die Ukraine zerschlagen wird, wenn die Ukraine enorme menschliche und materielle Verluste erleidet, wie es der Fall gewesen ist, dann ist das für ihre Unterstützer oder nominellen Unterstützer in den Vereinigten Staaten und der NATO nicht von Belang.

2:13

Die Anschaffung dieser F-16 steht also in dem Gesamtzusammenhang, dass es immer zu wenig, zu spät und zu wenig ausgerüstet ist, denn der Sieg der Ukraine ist nicht das Ziel. Es geht darum, den Konflikt in die Länge zu ziehen, Russland ausbluten zu lassen und es hoffentlich in einen Sumpf langfristiger Kriegsführung mit der Ukraine zu bringen, der Russland von den anderen geopolitischen Herausforderungen ablenkt, mit denen es weltweit konfrontiert ist.

WION: 2:49

Dr. Doctorow, was nun die größere Vision hinter diesem Russland-Ukraine-Krieg angeht, von Seiten der NATO oder des Westens, so gibt es natürlich unterschiedliche Meinungen. Wenn Sie jemanden aus dem Westen oder eher aus den USA fragen, oder jemanden, der das Verständnis der NATO versteht oder unterstützt, wird er vielleicht sagen, dass sie versuchen, Russland von einer Invasion abzuhalten, und dass sie Russland aus der Ukraine herausholen wollen, und dass sie deshalb die Ukraine mit den F-16 bewaffnen. Aber die Ukraine wird aus deren Sicht die F-16 so gut wie möglich einsetzen. Meinen Sie, dass die Ukraine die russische Luftabwehr zerstören muss, um die F-16 effektiv einzusetzen? Und wenn ich von russischer Luftabwehr spreche, dann meine ich damit, dass die F-16 an Russlands S-300, S-400 und S-500 vorbeikommen können, also an deren beeindruckenden Luftabwehrsystemen.

Doctorow: 3:37

Nun, ich denke, Sie kennen die Antwort darauf, und sie ist negativ. Natürlich können sie das nicht. Wie ich schon sagte, ist es für die Ukraine eine unmögliche Mission. Wenn diese Flugzeuge jemals abheben, wäre das ein Wunder. Die Russen wissen sehr genau, wo die verbleibenden Luftwaffenstützpunkte auf ukrainischem Boden sind, auf denen sie stationiert werden können. Die meisten Leute zeigen auf den äußersten Westen der Ukraine, das Gebiet nahe der rumänischen Grenze. Die Russen können auch die Karte lesen, und sie wissen sehr genau, welche Stützpunkte sie noch angreifen können, um es den Ukrainern physisch unmöglich zu machen, diese Flugzeuge von ihrem eigenen Territorium aus zu fliegen.

Was bedeutet das? Es bedeutet, dass sie diese Flugzeuge von Rumänien oder Bulgarien oder Polen aus fliegen würden, und es lädt dazu ein, den Konflikt zu einem direkten Krieg zwischen Russland und der NATO zu eskalieren. Ich bezweifle jedoch, dass es zu dieser kritischen Situation kommen wird, denn die Welt hat mehr als einen Herd für Konflikte und militärische Auseinandersetzungen. Und es könnte durchaus sein, dass er von einem regionalen Krieg im Nahen Osten oder in Westasien überholt wird, der zum neuen Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit und aller militärischen Bemühungen der Vereinigten Staaten und ihrer Verbündeten wird, wobei die Ukraine ins Hintertreffen gerät und weniger Unterstützung und weniger globale Medienaufmerksamkeit erhält als jetzt. Wir werden sehen. Aber alles wird sich in den unmittelbar vor uns liegenden Wochen abspielen. Was ich jetzt prognostiziere, ist also nicht etwas für die ferne Zukunft. Es ist etwas, das wir alle in den kommenden Tagen genau beobachten werden.

WION: 5:27

Dr. Doctorow, ich entnehme Ihren Ausführungen, dass Russland genau weiß, wo sich die Luftwaffenstützpunkte befinden, und dass Russland diese Stützpunkte, auf denen die F-16 stationiert sein könnten, ins Visier genommen und versprochen hat, sie zu treffen. Glauben Sie, dass es sich hierbei um eine Präventivmaßnahme Russlands handelt, um Schäden zu vermeiden, die die F-16 den russischen Streitkräften zufügen könnten, wenn sie abheben und eingesetzt würden?

Doctorow:

Nun, auf russischer Seite gibt es mehrere Ziele. Eines davon ist, was Sie sagen. Das andere ist, die Vereinigten Staaten zu demütigen und zu zeigen, dass die russische Ausrüstung, einschließlich Flugzeuge und Luftabwehr, allem überlegen ist, was die Vereinigten Staaten ins Ausland zu verkaufen versuchen. Ich denke, diese Botschaft hat sich in der gegenwärtigen Phase des Konflikts bereits bei den weltweiten Beschaffungsbeamten für militärische Ausrüstung, einschließlich der indischen, durchgesetzt. Die Errungenschaften der russischen Waffenentwickler und die Fähigkeit Russlands, sich mit neuer Ausrüstung, mit Drohnen und anderen Geräten, die vor zwei, drei Jahren in der Kriegsführung noch unbekannt waren, sehr schnell an die sich verändernden Herausforderungen auf dem Schlachtfeld anzupassen, sind offenkundig geworden. Russland hat bewiesen, dass es in der Lage ist, diese Fähigkeiten zu beherrschen und Ausrüstung, die diesen Herausforderungen gerecht wird, einzuführen und in großen Stückzahlen zu produzieren.

7:00

Russland hat also in jeder Hinsicht das übertroffen, was das Pentagon und seine Verbündeten in Westeuropa für Russland angenommen haben. Was den weltweiten Verkauf russischer Militärtechnik angeht, so sprechen die Experimente auf ukrainischem Territorium, einschließlich der wahrscheinlichen Zerstörung von F-16-Kampfflugzeugen am Boden, wenn nicht sogar in der Luft, für Russland.

Was die Veränderung des Krieges anbelangt, so sind sich Militärexperten einig, dass 10 oder gar 50 Flugzeuge in dem laufenden Konflikt bedeutungslos sind. Die Russen verfügen über Hunderte von Flugzeugen, viele davon Hochleistungsflugzeuge, die in der Lage sind, die F-16 abzuschießen, falls es jemals zu einem Luftkampf kommen sollte. Aber ich glaube nicht, dass es so weit kommen wird. Ich denke, dass diese Flugzeuge eher durch Schläge von Iskandar oder notfalls durch Hyperschallraketen wie Zircon oder noch wahrscheinlicher Kinzhal zerstört werden, bevor sie überhaupt den Flughafen verlassen. Ich weiß sehr wohl, dass die Vereinigten Staaten und die Ukrainer auf die robuste Beschaffenheit der Luftwaffenstützpunkte zählen, die die Ukraine von ihrer sowjetischen Vergangenheit geerbt hat. Diese waren ungewöhnlich gut verteidigt und verfügten über Betonbunker und Betonhangars für Flugzeuge. Dennoch ist Russlands Feuerkraft mit diesen Hyperschallraketen in der Lage, jeden der bestehenden Luftwaffenstützpunkte in der Ukraine zu zerstören, ganz zu schweigen von den benachbarten Luftwaffenstützpunkten in Rumänien oder Moldawien.

WION: 8:59

Herr Doktor, Sie sagten, dass es ein Wunder wäre, wenn diese Kampfjets überhaupt abheben würden. Ich verstehe, dass Sie nicht glauben, dass es ein Wunder wäre, wenn sie überhaupt innerhalb des Landes fliegen. Aber im Moment ist noch unklar, mit welchen Raketen die F-16 ausgestattet sein werden oder welche Raketen in die Ukraine geschickt werden, mit denen die F-16 ausgerüstet werden sollen. Und was noch wichtiger ist: Welche Reichweite werden sie haben? Glauben Sie, dass die Ukraine diese F-16 für Ziele innerhalb Russlands einsetzen würde, wenn sie starten und sich im ukrainischen Luftraum befinden?

Doctorow: 9:33

Ich denke, das ist das einzige Interesse, das die Kiewer Behörden an diesen Flugzeugen haben. Es ist unsinnig, wieder von Selbstverteidigung zu sprechen oder davon, dass sie damit die russische Luftabwehr zerstören wollen. Aber die Ukrainer hoffen, diese Flugzeuge für den Einsatz von Langstreckenraketen zu nutzen, was die Vereinigten Staaten unseres Wissens nach noch nicht für die Ausrüstung der F-16 genehmigt haben. Wir werden sehen. Alles ist immer ein wenig verspätet.

10:05

Der Punkt mit der Zerstörung dieser Flugzeuge am Boden ist – wir müssen uns nur daran erinnern, was in der vergangenen Woche geschehen ist. In den großen Medien des Westens wurde dies nicht thematisiert, aber in den russischen Medien wird über den zerstörerischen Angriff mit Kinzhal-Raketen auf einen umgebauten und neu gestalteten Stützpunkt westlich von Lemberg, ganz in der Nähe von Lemberg, gesprochen, der zahlreiche, Dutzende, wenn nicht Hunderte von NATO-Offizieren beherbergte, die mit der Ausbildung und Führung der ukrainischen Streitkräfte beschäftigt waren. Wenn dieser Stützpunkt so vollständig zerstört wurde und dabei, wie es heißt, 200 oder 300 Offiziere, darunter viele hochrangige NATO-Beamte, ums Leben kamen, wie groß ist dann die Chance, dass irgendeine F-16, die irgendwo auf ukrainischem Gebiet stationiert ist, den Racheangriffen der Russen entgeht? Ich glaube null.

WION: 11:18

Vielen Dank, Dr. Doctorow, dass Sie all Ihre Erkenntnisse mit uns teilen und uns Dinge mitteilen, die die normale Öffentlichkeit vielleicht nicht zu hören bekommt, weil der Großteil der Berichterstattung aus dem Westen kommt. Aber das ist eine Erzählung, die auch die Ohren der Menschen erreichen muss, die an der Sache interessiert sind und sehen wollen, wohin der russisch-ukrainische Krieg wirklich führt. Im Moment hat die Ukraine 10 F-16. Bis Ende des Jahres werden weitere erwartet, und im nächsten Jahr sollen es noch mehr sein. Welche Auswirkungen wird das haben? Wie Sie bereits sagten, werden wir nicht allzu lange warten müssen, um zu sehen, wie sich das tatsächlich auswirkt. Vielen Dank für Ihre Teilnahme an der Sendung “Game Plan”. Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, Analyst für internationale Angelegenheiten, Autor und Historiker, aus Brüssel zugeschaltet. Es ist immer ein Vergnügen, mit Ihnen zu sprechen, Sir.

Doctorow: 12:00

Ich danke Ihnen sehr.

We are now entering the second week of August and, looking at the reduced numbers of views to my own recent interview with Judge Napolitano on Judging Freedom compared to several weeks ago, as well as the comparatively reduced numbers of other interviewees with one or two exceptions (John Mearsheimer, in particular) it is manifestly obvious that the concerned citizens who constitute our audience have called it a day and are now at the beach somewhere or at another vacation getaway  where they are trying to enjoy life. That means putting aside all concern about why and how the end of the world is nigh.

I say ‘god bless’ to them all and, for my own part, am trying to do the same. I am spending some weeks at a rented apartment on the Belgian coast, where rain or no, everyone is determined to have a good time.

Knokke is the preserve of Belgium’s upper middle class-lower upper class strata. It is where they wisely lock away their savings in residential real estate that has appreciated 800% or more in the past 25 years and is likely to continue to soar in decades to come, far outpacing the stodgy growth rates in the rest of the country. You can exchange a 10,000 or 15,000 euros per meter apartments in Paris for a similar surface area in Knokke and have no cash left over.

When I brought my 16 year old grandson here for a couple of days a month ago, he asked in all seriousness: what do people do here?  And he was left perplexed by my answer:  ‘they live here,’ meaning that you have to spend your days somewhere and this is an agreeable place to do that even if there are no exciting water sports, glitzy movie theaters  or other entertainments that a 16 year old might think of first. I explained that they come to enjoy a beer seated at a brasserie by the paved walkway abutting the beach or to enjoy fine dining at some of the country’s best gourmet restaurants, like Olivier’s,  host to ‘millionaires craving love’ as a 1990s issue of Het Laatste Nieuws printed, quoting the owner-founder Philippe Moffaert. Olivier’s is just a 5 minute walk from our apartment. Alternatively, they spend their time with close relatives and friends from elsewhere in Belgium who own or rent apartments or villas just near their own. feasting on restaurant quality take-out food from local caterers.

In keeping with the often glum, rainy weather of my home city, Brussels, the predominant mood there is almost always restrained and inward looking. But here in Knokke the mood is a direct continuation of those cheery faces you see in Rubens paintings: this is Flemish camaraderie and exuberance at its most traditional. It is family life with lots of little kids to be seen as well as heard on the walkway for strolling along the beach, the digue or zeedijk, if you will.

This town was once famous for its Casino. Times change, and the Casino is now slated for demolition and rebirth, they say, in a more contemporary form.  Its many summer events have been reduced to just one month long Gala Show which promises three hours of Moulin Rouge type entertainment, featuring dancing girls in elaborate plumed costumes and bare asses.  My wife and I went there the other night and were very pleasantly surprised by how well the management understood the needs and desires of its mixed audience which ranged in age from 18 year olds to grandmas and grandpas in their late sixties to early eighties. 

If most of the dancing girls were overweight and more representative of 19^th century demi-monde than of the sleek long-legged Slavic gals on the French stages, there was good reason:  the audience is not 40 year old purchasing executives being hosted to a sexy evening out by French corporate sales people but retired Flemings looking with greater interest at the singers providing renditions of ABBA and Elton John songs or world class variety show jugglers and magicians, who also appeared on stage.  And they came in groups of family and friend s, taking tables for six to ten for themselves.

Midway through the 3 hour show, the audience was already warming up.  Hands were swaying in the air to some of the songs. By the last 45 minutes, even the oldest and least stable on their feet among the audience threw away their canes and were shuffling- dancing between tables.  The management had very wisely provided an ambiance where their aging audience could shed decades, shed self-consciousness and enjoy some moments of youthful ‘shaking a leg.’

Here on the coast, French is a disappearing language spoken only by ever declining numbers of Walloon and Brusseler visitors from the south of the country who remain loyal to this territory year after year despite national ethnic divisions and political wrangling. The locals remain competently bilingual, but it is now English and Flemish that they speak. Nonetheless, the Flemings clearly remain appreciative of the achievements of French civilization, such as the butter laden croissants they line up to purchase at the better Knokke bakeries. In the same spirit nearly half of the songs we heard from the stage in the Casino were French chansons. 

Were any of those folks around me in the Casino thinking about the war in Ukraine or of the about to start regional war in the Middle East?   I very much doubt it.  For them, like for the members of the prestigious royal social club of which I am a member in Brussels, the wars are just an inconvenience, a nuisance, and everyone responsible for them in their eyes, like Vladimir Putin or the Iranian leadership, is a pest. If you were to tell them that we are hair’s breadth away from a Third World War, they would consider you mentally unbalanced.

I easily imagine that the situation is the same if you visited the New Jersey shore these days. The insouciance, the willful ignorance of the unpleasantness and outright mortal dangers of current international politics is a commonality that binds together those enjoying prosperity on the two continents, of whom there are vastly greater numbers than those of us in the Opposition to the American led permanent wars and chaos.

All of the foregoing brings me back to my own explanation of how we may all be delivered from well-earned destruction:  divine intervention.  Watch for it!

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Ist der Sommer endlich gekommen?

Wir befinden uns jetzt in der zweiten Augustwoche, und wenn man sich die im Vergleich zu vor einigen Wochen gesunkenen Zugriffszahlen auf mein eigenes Interview mit Judge Napolitano auf Judging Freedom ansieht, sowie die vergleichsweise gesunkenen Zugriffszahlen auf andere Interviewpartner mit ein oder zwei Ausnahmen (insbesondere John Mearsheimer), dann ist es offensichtlich, dass die besorgten Bürger, die unser Publikum ausmachen, Feierabend gemacht haben und jetzt irgendwo am Strand oder an einem anderen Urlaubsort sind, wo sie versuchen, das Leben zu genießen. Das bedeutet, dass sie alle Sorgen darüber, warum und wie das Ende der Welt naht, beiseite schieben.

Ich sage ihnen allen ‘Gott segne Sie’ und versuche meinerseits, dasselbe zu tun. Ich verbringe einige Wochen in einer gemieteten Wohnung an der belgischen Küste, wo jeder, egal ob es regnet oder nicht, entschlossen ist, sich zu amüsieren.

Knokke ist die Domäne der belgischen oberen Mittelschicht und der unteren Oberschicht. Hier haben sie ihre Ersparnisse klugerweise in Wohnimmobilien angelegt, die in den letzten 25 Jahren einen Wertzuwachs von 800 % oder mehr erfahren haben und in den kommenden Jahrzehnten wahrscheinlich weiter steigen werden, weit mehr als die schwerfälligen Wachstumsraten im Rest des Landes. Sie können eine 10.000 oder 15.000 Euro pro Quadratmeter teure Wohnung in Paris gegen eine ähnliche Fläche in Knokke eintauschen und haben kein Geld mehr übrig.

Als ich vor einem Monat meinen 16-jährigen Enkel für ein paar Tage hierher gebracht habe, fragte er allen Ernstes: Was machen die Leute hier? Und meine Antwort verblüffte ihn: “Sie leben hier”, was bedeutet, dass man seine Tage irgendwo verbringen muss, und dies ist ein angenehmer Ort, um dies zu tun, auch wenn es keine aufregenden Wassersportarten, glitzernde Kinos oder andere Unterhaltungsmöglichkeiten gibt, an die ein 16-Jähriger vielleicht zuerst denkt. Ich habe ihm erklärt, dass sie hierher kommen, um ein Bier in einer Brasserie am gepflasterten Strandweg zu trinken oder um in einigen der besten Gourmet-Restaurants des Landes zu speisen, wie z.B. im Olivier’s, das “Millionäre auf der Suche nach Liebe” beherbergt, wie es in einer Ausgabe von Het Laatste Nieuws aus den 1990er Jahren hieß, in der der Eigentümer und Gründer Philippe Moffaert zitiert wurde. Olivier’s ist nur 5 Minuten zu Fuß von unserer Wohnung entfernt. Oder sie verbringen ihre Zeit mit engen Verwandten und Freunden aus anderen Teilen Belgiens, die Wohnungen oder Villen in der Nähe ihrer eigenen besitzen oder mieten, und schlemmen in Restaurantqualität, die sie von lokalen Anbietern erhalten.

Passend zu dem oft trüben, regnerischen Wetter in meiner Heimatstadt Brüssel ist die vorherrschende Stimmung dort fast immer verhalten und nach innen gerichtet. Aber hier in Knokke ist die Stimmung eine direkte Fortsetzung der fröhlichen Gesichter, die man auf Rubens-Gemälden sieht: das ist flämische Kameradschaft und Ausgelassenheit in ihrer traditionellsten Form. Es ist ein Familienleben mit vielen kleinen Kindern, die man auf dem Spazierweg am Strand, dem digue oder zeedijk, wenn man so will, sehen und hören kann.

Diese Stadt war einst für ihr Casino berühmt. Die Zeiten ändern sich, und das Casino soll nun abgerissen und in einer zeitgemäßeren Form wiederaufgebaut werden, heißt es. Die vielen Sommerveranstaltungen wurden auf eine einmonatige Gala-Show reduziert, die drei Stunden Unterhaltung im Stil des Moulin Rouge verspricht, mit tanzenden Mädchen in aufwendigen Kostümen mit Federn und nackten Hintern. Meine Frau und ich waren neulich eines abends dort und sehr angenehm überrascht, wie gut das Management die Bedürfnisse und Wünsche des gemischten Publikums verstanden hat, das im Alter von 18 Jahren bis zu Omas und Opas in ihren späten Sechzigern bis frühen Achtzigern reichte.

Wenn die meisten Tänzerinnen übergewichtig waren und eher der Demi-Monde des 19. Jahrhunderts entsprachen als den schlanken, langbeinigen slawischen Mädels auf den französischen Bühnen, so hatte das einen guten Grund: Das Publikum besteht nicht aus 40-jährigen Führungskräften aus dem Einkaufsbereich, die von französischen Vertriebsmitarbeitern zu einem sexy Abend eingeladen werden, sondern aus Flamen im Ruhestand, die mit größerem Interesse den Sängern zuschauen, die ABBA- und Elton-John-Songs vortragen, oder den Weltklasse-Varieté-Jongleuren und Zauberern, die ebenfalls auf der Bühne stehen. Und sie kamen in Gruppen von Familie und Freunden und nahmen Tische für sechs bis zehn Personen für sich allein.

Nach der Hälfte der dreistündigen Show war das Publikum bereits aufgewärmt. Zu einigen Liedern wurden die Hände in der Luft geschwungen. In den letzten 45 Minuten warfen selbst die ältesten und unsichersten unter den Zuschauern ihre Stöcke weg und schlurften tanzend zwischen den Tischen hin und her. Das Management hatte in weiser Voraussicht für ein Ambiente gesorgt, in dem das alternde Publikum die Jahrzehnte hinter sich lassen, sein Bewusstsein seiner selbst ablegen und einige Momente des jugendlichen “Beineschwingens” genießen konnte.

Hier an der Küste ist Französisch eine verschwindende Sprache, die nur noch von einer immer geringer werdenden Zahl wallonischer und brüsseler Besucher aus dem Süden des Landes gesprochen wird, die diesem Gebiet trotz nationaler ethnischer Spaltungen und politischer Querelen Jahr für Jahr die Treue halten. Die Einheimischen sind nach wie vor kompetent zweisprachig, aber sie sprechen jetzt Englisch und Flämisch. Nichtsdestotrotz wissen die Flamen die Errungenschaften der französischen Zivilisation nach wie vor zu schätzen, wie etwa die mit Butter gefüllten Croissants, für die sie in den besseren Bäckereien von Knokke Schlange stehen. In diesem Sinne waren fast die Hälfte der Lieder, die wir auf der Bühne des Casinos hörten, französische Chansons.

Hat irgendjemand von den Leuten um mich herum im Casino an den Krieg in der Ukraine oder an den bevorstehenden regionalen Krieg im Nahen Osten gedacht? Ich bezweifle das sehr. Für sie, wie auch für die Mitglieder des angesehenen königlichen Gesellschaftsklubs, dem ich in Brüssel angehöre, sind die Kriege nur eine Unannehmlichkeit, ein Ärgernis, und jeder, der für sie verantwortlich ist, wie Wladimir Putin oder die iranische Führung, ist in ihren Augen eine Plage. Wenn man ihnen sagen würde, dass wir um Haaresbreite von einem Dritten Weltkrieg entfernt sind, würden sie einen für geistig verwirrt halten.

Ich kann mir gut vorstellen, dass die Situation die gleiche ist, wenn Sie in diesen Tagen die Küste von New Jersey besuchen. Die Sorglosigkeit, die vorsätzliche Ignoranz gegenüber den Unannehmlichkeiten und offenkundigen tödlichen Gefahren der gegenwärtigen internationalen Politik ist eine Gemeinsamkeit, die diejenigen verbindet, die sich auf beiden Kontinenten ihres Wohlstands erfreuen, von denen es weitaus mehr gibt als diejenigen von uns, die in der Opposition zu den von den Amerikanern geführten permanenten Kriegen und dem Chaos stehen.

All das bringt mich zurück zu meiner eigenen Erklärung, wie wir alle von der wohlverdienten Zerstörung befreit werden können: göttliches Eingreifen. Haltet Ausschau danach!

JAfter the two fallow weeks when Judge Andrew Napolitano was away on vacation, it was very good earlier today to resume our weekly online chat about developments in global politics as seen from the Russian perspective.

Our discussion topics included how the war in and about Ukraine has transformed the Russian nation as its military successes against the whole of NATO and the growing prosperity of its working and middle classes in the face of the ‘sanctions from hell’ imposed by the United States and its allies overcame a decades-long inferiority complex that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Among other topics was the current official Russian position with respect to the American presidential election in November now that Joe Biden, Putin’s originally preferred candidate has bowed out and Kamala Harris has become the presumed candidate of the Democrats.

We talked about Putin’s ‘mirror image’ plans for countering American installation of Tomahawk cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles in Germany in 2026.

I am hopeful that viewers will find value in these various information points and come back for more next week.

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus) followed by full transcript in English

Judging Freedom: Hat der Krieg Russland verändert?

Nach den zwei ruhigen Wochen, in denen Judge Andrew Napolitano im Urlaub war, war es heute sehr gut, unseren wöchentlichen Online-Chat über die Entwicklungen in der Weltpolitik aus russischer Sicht wieder aufzunehmen.

Zu unseren Diskussionsthemen gehörte, wie der Krieg in der und um die Ukraine die russische Nation verändert hat, da ihre militärischen Erfolge gegen die gesamte NATO und der wachsende Wohlstand ihrer Arbeiter- und Mittelschicht angesichts der von den Vereinigten Staaten und ihren Verbündeten verhängten “Sanktionen aus der Hölle” einen jahrzehntelangen Minderwertigkeitskomplex überwunden haben, der auf den Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion folgte.

Ein weiteres Thema war die derzeitige offizielle russische Position in Bezug auf die amerikanischen Präsidentschaftswahlen im November, nachdem Joe Biden, Putins ursprünglich bevorzugter Kandidat, nicht mehr antritt und Kamala Harris die mutmaßliche Kandidatin der Demokraten geworden ist.

Wir sprachen über Putins “spiegelbildliche” Pläne zur Abwehr der amerikanischen Aufstellung von Tomahawk-Marschflugkörpern und Hyperschallraketen in Deutschland im Jahr 2026.

Ich hoffe, dass die Zuschauer einen Nutzen aus diesen verschiedenen Informationen ziehen und nächste Woche wiederkommen, um mehr zu erfahren.

Transcription by a reader

Judge Andrew Napolitano: 00:32
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for ‘Judging Freedom”. Today is Thursday, August 1st — August 1st, where’s the summer going? 2024. Professor Gilbert Doctorow will be with us in just a moment on: is the war in Ukraine transforming Russia?

[Omitted commercial message.]

02:05
Professor Doctorow, good day to you, my friend, and thank you so much for joining us. We have many things to discuss. I’d like to start with Russia. Do you think that the war in Ukraine is transforming Russia, either the government or the people or their relationship to the government?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 02:24
Well, I’ve started to get my mind around this question because I received an invitation by an academic in Florida to contribute to a book he’s publishing in the UK, and I was given the chapter precisely on this question of Russian self-conception and how wars make nations. In Western media, there has been occasional mention of the new Ukraine, of the Ukrainian national concept that has taken hold as a result of the pressures of the war and the patriotism that war necessarily stirs up. But they have given no attention to the other side of the equation. What has the war done to Russia? And that’s something that I have noted in a variety of ways by visiting Russia and by following their media.

03:15
The biggest change has been a realization of the power and importance of their own country, something about which Russians were skeptical. They had been running an inferiority complex from the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, and it took a long time to recover from that. Just this particular war and the understanding of the military achievements of their country up against not just Ukraine, although that is a formidable enough power as the war started, but against the whole of NATO. They follow the news. The news in Russia is understated, underplayed. They do not behave in a boastful way on Russian news stations or commentary. But there’s enough information in following the daily action on the front for the Russian viewer to understand that his country is achieving something quite remarkable and unexpected.

04:16
I go back to the last presidential election when the the Democratic-Liberal groups, Yabloko is the best known among them, who were opposing President Putin’s re-election and who were saying that what he was trying to do was unrealistic, given that Russia accounts for only 3% of global GNP, and how could it possibly on that basis be, consider itself, a peer of the United States with its vastly greater national wealth. Nonetheless, the reality on the ground in the daily reports proved to the Russian public that their country has possibly the most effective army in the world for the type of fight that’s going on, a land war against Ukraine.

05:05
I don’t say in every sense, of course. Everyone knows, that a country like Russia, I mean every Russian knows, cannot be placed on the same status as the United States with its 900 or whatever military bases around the world. But for the sake of preserving its own sovereignty, I think Russians are persuaded that their country is quite extraordinary, and they are revising their feelings about their homeland. And that comes up in all aspects. Russian culture is changing in many ways before our eyes due to the modernization of transportation, the upgrading of retailing, and other developments that affect everyone every day. I see this, even my last experience a month ago, two months ago, in St. Petersburg, taking taxis.

06:08
Whereas going back, all of my experience for the last two decades was the taxi drivers, I called them the voice of the people, and one of my sources of information about the country, but most of the taxi drivers I took were listening to, shall we call them opposition, if not seditious radio stations. This was a matter of course, when you got into a taxi, you understood that they were probably listening to the equivalent of dozhd’, of rain. These were strictly anti-Putin. Now, the Russian taxis, in line with many other changes in Russian commercial life, are being driven by young ambitious men who don’t talk politics and who certainly don’t listen to seditious radio stations. They instead have their minds fixated on where they’re going to get spare parts for their Chinese imported cars, and they will very happily engage you in discussion of that.

07:11
The negative feeling, the black humor that was so customary in my period when I lived in Russia, which is the 1995-2002, and in the decades since which I visited, that has dried up. Friends and acquaintances whom I would consider an intellectual community– and these were among the majority of our acquaintances, but by no means all– they were always, by nature, very skeptical of their government and very enamored of travel to Western Europe and the world at large. They have changed their mindsets, and the war has been the greatest determinant of that. They understand fully that the West, the United States-led West, is looking for the destruction of their country. And necessarily, they have had to accept somewhat reluctantly that the West that they adored is no longer a friend and was unlikely to be a friend in the generation to come.

Napolitano: 08:14
About a year ago, I interviewed a Russian businessman who himself was a retired FSB agent, and I asked him, what do the Russian people think of Joe Biden? And as soon as the question was translated, I saw a smile on his face from ear to ear, and the answer came back. Judge, when we often walk down the street with each other, we high five and say, thank you, Joe Biden. He has unified the country. He has caused us to become economically independent, and we’re actually more prosperous than we were before the sanctions were imposed. Do you agree with those observations? And again, this is about a year ago.

Doctorow: 09:00
Let me comment on the last sentence you made about more prosperous. I’m asked occasionally when I speak publicly by people in the audience, what do you recommend that we read or listen to in order to be better informed about what is going on in the world and in particular in the East-West confrontation that we see in our newspapers, but which is always colored by the Washington narrative. What do I recommend? Well, some, I usually say, just read what you read, but be more attentive to what’s in front of your eyes. Or watch the BBC, but look for the discrepancy between what the presenter is saying to you and the images that you find in the background.

09:42
This discrepancy tells you that there is a false overlay, an editorial overlay, which is in contradiction with the realities. And so it is– the “Financial Times” three or four days ago had a feature article, must be five or six tight pages, on the prosperity of today’s Russia, which they described in great detail, how incomes of rust-belt towns, in one- industry towns, which had fallen into absolute poverty in the 1990s, these had been revived, and people are now earning 10 times what they did just a couple of years ago. Our truck drivers in Russia are now earning the equivalent of 2,000 euros a month. This is– a great deal of wealth has come into the pockets of working-class and middle- class Russian citizens. And that, of course affects their feelings of patriotism and enthusiasm for the powers that be. Now, this was in the “Financial Times”, and I make that point.

Napolitano: 10:46
Right, right. And the “Financial Times” is not particularly pro-Russian, and not at all, in the war in Ukraine. If anything, it’s one of Kyiv’s cheerleaders, is it not?

Doctorow:
Definitely. They like the New York Times. They try to put a spin– that is, the editorial. I don’t distinguish between the journalists, many of whom are excellent professionals, and the people who publish what they write, and the copywriters who put the titles, the headings on their articles, titles which often contradict the content, particularly if you go down three or four pages.

Napolitano: 11:29
I agree, I agree. I read the “Financial Times” every day. I agree with you fully on your analysis of it. I want you to listen to a retired British colonel by the name of Philip Ingram. I really never heard of him before, but this is a contrary view. And I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on a cut number 11.

Ingram: 11:48
It’s costing them over a thousand troops a day. In the past 24 hours, the Russians have lost over 1300 troops. They’ve lost over 28 artillery systems. They’ve lost over 12 tanks. And they’re losing those sorts of numbers on a daily basis. And that is, frankly, unsustainable. No matter how big your military force is, no matter how capable it is.

Napolitano:
Is he talking about some other war, or is he talking about Ukraine?

Doctorow:
Well, for a liar, he’s being very modest. Generally speaking, if you follow the news over the last two years, whenever the Russians put out some statement about what they have done, what they have achieved, a day or two later, you find the mirror image of this statement made by the Ukrainians who were saying that’s the Russians who have suffered these losses. Now he said the Russians are losing 1,000– my good says the man has no imagination The Russians have been saying daily that the Ukrainians are losing 2,000. So I would take it in that spirit: that he is a disseminator of false news and of propaganda.

Napolitano: 12:55
Here’s President Putin who’s not very happy on July 28, just three or four days ago, commenting on the Western placement or plans to place offensive weaponry in Germany aimed, obviously, eastwar. Cut number one.

Putin: [English voice over Russian]
The situation recalls the events of the Cold War era. If the US implements such plans, we will consider ourselves free from the previously imposed one-sided moratorium on the deployment of medium- and shorter-range strike systems. We will take mirror measures for their deployment.

Napolitano: 13:40
There’s that phrase again, “mirror measures”. How do you read this?

Doctorow:
I think he’s preparing the public for the Russian rollout of what they already have developed. There’s been discussion in the media, what missiles Russians have. From the rather authoritative commentators that I’ve heard on the program of Vyacheslav Nikonov, “The Great Game”, I take it to understand that these are Kinzhal rockets, which have, which are almost unstoppable. And they, the plans are to extend their range so that they will cover the whole of Western Europe. And that is the Russian response. There is some discussion still about exactly what the Americans are going to put in. The announcement made from Germany that these will be the Tomahawks and also hypersonic missiles, but the United States to date has no hypersonic missiles. So, that is a bit confusing. And also there was mentioned, or so it seemed to be mentioned, the missiles going in being long-range, not just, not short- to medium-range.

14:50
So these discrepancies still have to be clarified. But the notion is that the United States would be putting in place missiles capable of destroying the early-warning systems and the military infrastructure for a effective Russian response to a first strike by the United States.

Napolitano: 15:14
Does the Kremlin perceive this, Professor Doctorow, talking about missiles in Germany, as just a provocation or as a serious threat that must be neutralized?

Doctorow:
Oh, it’s both. It is a provocation. The United States is offering what it still doesn’t have. But as a threat, as a real threat, of course, the Tomahawks, as they presently exist, could introduced and would be a serious problem for Russia, depending again on who presses the button first. And that is a subject for discussion. What is Russian predisposition to make preventive attack or to only respond to incoming missiles? Of course, responding to incoming missiles, if there’s a five minute path time between launch and hitting target is a problematic all by itself.

Napolitano: 16:11
Going to the other side of Russia, here is a view of Russian and Chinese fighter jets off the coast of Alaska. Now for what purpose was this done?

Doctorow:
The purpose of both the Russians and the Chinese is to counter the notion of an Asian NATO. This has been rolled out by Washington, it has been spoken for by Ian Stoltenberg, and it is– the Russians are concerned, not without reason, that the United States wants to build on AUKUS, that is on the American, Australian, and British alliance that now exists for cooperation in the Asian theater, and to bring in other countries to prepare for a common military force against the Chinese, first by containment, and then for an eventual war in which they would all participate and try to snuff out China.

17:26
The Chinese, for their part, are emphasizing that Eurasia has two ends to it. And if NATO can move east, then China can move west. We saw this three weeks ago, when the Chinese appeared at the Polish and Ukrainian borders within Belarus for what were called anti-terrorist common exercises. We saw this when the Chinese sent two of their naval vessels to St. Petersburg last Sunday to participate in Navy Day, the first time anything like that has happened before. So, the Chinese are making the point, and the Russians are very happy to help them make the point, that if NATO goes global, then the Russian-Chinese alliance, well, it’s not an alliance formally, but cooperation in in mutual defense goes global.

Napolitano: 18:27
Do the Russians have nuclear submarines off the coast of the United States, whether it’s down by Florida or up by the mid-Atlantic?

Doctorow:
Yes, they do. But that is not the only threat that they are posing to the United States. We don’t know the status of the Poseidon, a submarine drone or torpedo, which can blow up a city like the size of Washington with a tidal wave. We don’t know the status of that, whether it’s been implemented, where they actually have stationed these invisible because the radar, because they’re such a depth that I say radar– to sonar that you cannot follow them. They exist or not. We do know that the Russians threatened going back to 2018, to station frigates off the US coast, just in international waters.

19:24
Frigates carrying these hypersonic missiles and having a five-minute or 10-minute flight time to Washington, D.C. and to other major United States cities and military installations. This has been dismissed by some people, saying that the frigates are visible, they can easily be tracked, then they are not effective. But there’s more to it than that. The missiles that we’re talking about are also capable of being carried by ordinary 40-foot commercial containers. And so theoretically, they could be positioned in third country vessels, which would not necessarily be followed by US reconnaissance. Therefore, the possibility of the two seas, the Atlantic and the Pacific, being not safeguards for America, but being the launch space for deadly threats against America, that remains alive.

Napolitano: 20:26
Wow. Fascinating observations. Since last you and I spoke, there was, of course, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, and there was, of course, the withdrawal of Joe Biden from the American presidential race. What is the Kremlin’s view of the attempt to kill Trump, the withdrawal of Biden, and the ascendancy of Kamala Harris?

Doctorow: 20:54
Well, as I follow these talk shows, and Viesti, the official state news, I see a distinct picture emerging. One is not the least bit surprised that there would have been an attempt on Trump’s life. Two, simply that is given the way that the deep state and the intelligence agencies, the three-letter agencies in the states operate according to Russian understanding. As for the dropping out of Biden and the ascendancy of Kamala Harris, that has created significant change in Russian official positions with respect to the U.S. elections. We know that Vladimir Putin said months and months ago that his preferred candidate between the two, Trump and Biden was Biden because Biden is more predictable, whereas Trump is really a wild card. They were saying that in 2020 as well, I might say, I might mention, notwithstanding all the Russiagate talk in the States.

22:06
The fact now is that the Russians are trashing Kamala Harris. The most piquant remarks about how she started her career on her back, that Megyn Kelly has been broadcasting recently, they have been picked up by Russian state television and they are fed to the Russian audience. Kamala Harris is not the favorite flavor of the Kremlin, and that leads them to be involuntarily backing Trump.

Napolitano: 22:40
Very interesting. What is the Russian view of what appears to be coming conflagration in the Middle East, particularly the theory that if Israel engages in a full-bore invasion of Lebanon, iran will engage in a full-bore invasion of israel. And if iran is seriously threatened it will look to the Kremlin for assistance. What is your take on that?

Doctorow:
Officially, the Russians are being very conservative in describing what’s going on presently in the Middle East. I was watching last night’s program of Nikonov on his talk show that I described as the most authoritative and the most calm and reasonable. There are others that are quite emotional. His is not. And in the sequence of items that they discussed, the number one item was Mr. Putin’s meeting with president of Indonesia, which was highly important, but you would think not more important than the threat of war in the Middle East. So it was number three, only number three item was the assassination of the Hezbollah leader in Tehran and the Iranian reaction. So right now, at the present moment, Russia is not preparing its public for any possible intervention in the Middle East.

24:24
Nonetheless, there are other developments. I’ve pointed out in the past two weeks the surprise visit, a very hasty visit that lasted two and a half hours of direct talks with Putin by Bashar Assad of Syria. They were talking business and they were talking clearly what the tango will be, who’s going to take which stance step as the situation develops in the neighborhood of Syria. Remember that the Russians are there, even without regard to what Israel may do to Lebanon or elsewhere. What they do in Syria brings them into very close proximity with the two Russian bases, one naval base and one air base. I imagine that one discussion point was providing assistance to Syria in defending its sovereignty against Israeli air incursions and bombing, which has gone on without interruption from the time of the Syrian civil war to today. That is now becoming unacceptable to the Russians, that Syria is so vulnerable and that Israel has a free hand, because Syria is an important transit point for Iranian military and other assistance to Hezbollah.

Napolitano: 25:57
Can you foresee Russian involvement either land, sea or air in an effort to repel the IDF from getting too close to Syria?

Doctorow:
I think that would be a decision forced on them. It’s certainly not in Russia’s plans. But as one of your recent guests, Colonel McGregor, was saying, and I followed his remarks very closely, Washington would be badly mistaken if it thinks that Russia is tied down by the Ukraine war It is unable or unwilling to intervene in the Middle East to defend its interests and the security of its close cooperation partners of which Iran is the single most important.

Napolitano: 26:51
I want to play for you a clip from the person that I often refer to as the adult in the room, you know immediately who it is, describing the Russian view of the American failures in foreign policy. Cut number three.

Sergey Lavrov: 27:12 [English voice over Russian]
When the United States entered the world stage in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, how did it end? What peaceful changes for the better occurred there? Now when they repeat like a mantra, we will support Ukraine for as long as it takes, I’m curious: how long will it take? Like in Afghanistan, where it took 20 years to realize that you lost, or in Iraq, where you also left, although now you are trying to stay despite the Iraqi Parliament’s decision that the US should withdraw its troops. Or like in Libya, where the state collapsed and now everyone is trying to piece it back together. A multipolar world is a reality. It’s not something someone invented.

Napolitano: 27:55
Your thoughts?

Doctorow:
Well, the language has changed in Russia. And senior spokesmen, of whom Mr. Lavrov is one of the key personalities, he is saying now, what he certainly knew years ago, but never dared to say. He is naming names, and he is naming specific US failures and their consequences, which mostly were very bloody consequences for the countries that they were going to assist on their way to democracy. So this– what he is saying, you will hear now from other Russian officials, whether they be legislators, as Duma or Federation Council members, who are given the microphone, or if there are other spokesmen from within the government. And of course, the most open and strongest critic of the United States is his own deputy, Mr. Epcof. It’s a new language from Russia, which is refreshing, because for so long, for more than a decade, they were speaking about their colleagues in the United States. And it took a while to progress to something close to calling them the enemies.

Napolitano: 29:15
Professor Doctorow, it’s a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for sharing the breadth of your knowledge. I hope you can come back with us again next week and continue with us on a regular basis. Those two vacation weeks of mine were an aberration. We’re we’re back in the saddle. Thank you so much.

Doctorow:
Well, thanks for the invitation.

Napolitano:
Of course, great conversation and I’m privileged to have a very, very intelligent person willing to share everything with us. Coming up later today at 9 o’clock Eastern, Tony Schaefer. At 3 o’clock this afternoon Eastern, Professor John Mearsheimer. At 4 o’clock this afternoon Eastern, Aaron Maté.

29:57
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.

I take pride in being among a prestigious group of regular interviewees for Nima Alkhorshid’s Dialogue Works broadcasts on youtube. 

The title (above) which he gave to yesterday’s 45 minute chat is revealing about the art: a certain amount of hype is essential to catch the interest of an audience that has many alternative expert discussions on line to choose from.

To be sure, the daily advances of Russian forces all along the line of confrontation in Ukraine are being recognized even by Kiev’s cheerleaders in Western media, like The Financial Times and The New York Times,  although they wishfully attribute this to Moscow’s willingness to take heavy losses,  something which is scarcely believable if you follow closely the methods that the Russian high command puts in place before every attack on the Ukrainian positions, namely devastating aerial bombing, rocket, artillery and drone strikes that destroy the defenses of the enemy well before the Russian storm brigades move in for the kill.

On the other side, some of our most respected military commentators, like Colonel Douglas  Macgregor and Scott Ritter are describing the daily Russian advance in such glowing terms that one may well expect the Ukrainian military to capitulate in a week or two, an eventuality which I believe is highly unlikely, precisely because of the deliberateness and caution of the Russian high command, as well as the appearance on the Ukrainian side of ever new  schemes to escape their fate, such as the cutthroat mercenaries from Colombia who were shown for the first time by Russian television tonight.

In this interview, I put the battlefield situation in the frame of what I see each day on Russian state television, meaning the Vesti news bulletins and the most authoritative and sober talk show and commentary, Bolshaya Igra (The Great Game) hosted by Vycheslav Nikonov .  Russian television reporting still plays down what is happening at the line of confrontation. It is being spoken of in terms of improved positioning, presumably for a major offensive still to come. The reporting from each area of the front calls out the settlements that are being fought over, what parts have already been taken by Russian troops, what parts are held by the enemy. But the war correspondents intentionally do not give you a sense of their strategic importance or of how Russia will move not a couple of kilometers forward per day but the many dozens of kilometers that must be covered to completely liberate the Donbas, not to mention reach the Dnieper river, the midway point in what was Ukraine in 1991.

Nonetheless, as I point out in this interview, there is a very significant change in what the front line soldiers are saying to the reporters today compared to several months ago. Back then it was clear that the Russians were heavily stressed from dodging the drones and return artillery fire. They faced multiple daily counter attacks here and there which they had to snuff out. Now these soldiers are clearly very confident of their superiority in terms of arms, tactics and strategy. They are, as Donald Trump told Zelensky in their recent phone call, ‘a killing machine’ that is prevailing.

                                                                       *****

Those of you who watch this interview will appreciate that it also covers a variety of topics from current international developments, beginning with a discussion of the Navy Day celebrations in St Petersburg this past Sunday. Navy Day 2024 was notable for showing off some of the latest additions to the Russian fleet, for the foreign vessels participating in this event for the first time in my decades long experience, for the foreign, mainly BRICS delegations of high navy officers who flew to Russia to take part and for a very important speech by Vladimir Putin on Russia’s response to US plans to install in Germany in 2026 long range nuclear capable Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as still to be manufactured American hypersonic missiles.

As regards the foreign participation, I hasten to add here what I did not say in the interview: that this is yet another proof that Russia’s dramatic successes on the battlefield and the obvious superiority of its weaponry compared to what the United States and NATO are supplying to Ukraine create the conditions for many countries from the Global South to show solidarity with the winner. That is simply a basic law of human behavior.

In our chat, we also touched upon the question of how Russians view Kamala Harris now that she is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President, what to make of Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski’s call for conscription age Ukrainian males in the EU to be sent home to join Zelensky’s army and several other noteworthy news items of the past 10 days since my last time on his program.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

31. Juli 2024

Translation into German below (Andreas Mylaeus) followed by full transcript in English

‘Dialogue Works’: Russland setzt unerbittliche Truppenwellen ein und überwältigt die ukrainischen Streitkräfte!

Ich bin stolz darauf, zu einer angesehenen Gruppe regelmäßiger Interviewpartner für Nima Alkhorshid’s Dialogue Works-Sendungen auf youtube zu gehören.

Der Titel (oben), den er dem gestrigen 45-minütigen Chat gegeben hat, sagt viel über die Kunst aus: Ein gewisses Maß an Hype ist unerlässlich, um das Interesse eines Publikums zu wecken, das viele alternative Expertendiskussionen online zur Auswahl hat.

Zwar werden die täglichen Vorstöße der russischen Streitkräfte entlang der Konfrontationslinie in der Ukraine selbst von Kiews Befürwortern in westlichen Medien wie der Financial Times und der New York Times anerkannt , doch schreiben sie dies wehmütig der Bereitschaft Moskaus zu schweren Verlusten zu, was kaum zu glauben ist, wenn man die Methoden genau verfolgt, die das russische Oberkommando vor jedem Angriff auf die ukrainischen Stellungen anwendet, nämlich verheerende Luftangriffe, Raketen-, Artillerie- und Drohnenangriffe, die die Verteidigung des Feindes zerstören, lange bevor die russischen Sturmbrigaden zum Einsatz kommen.

Auf der anderen Seite beschreiben einige unserer angesehensten Militärkommentatoren wie Colonel Douglas Macgregor und Scott Ritter den täglichen russischen Vormarsch mit so glühenden Worten, dass man durchaus erwarten kann, dass das ukrainische Militär in ein oder zwei Wochen kapituliert, was ich für höchst unwahrscheinlich halte, gerade wegen der Besonnenheit und Vorsicht des russischen Oberkommandos und weil auf ukrainischer Seite immer neue Pläne auftauchen, ihrem Schicksal zu entgehen, wie zum Beispiel die Halsabschneider-Söldner aus Kolumbien, die heute Abend zum ersten Mal vom russischen Fernsehen gezeigt wurden.

In diesem Interview habe ich die Situation auf dem Schlachtfeld in den Rahmen dessen gestellt, was ich jeden Tag im russischen Staatsfernsehen sehe, d.h. in den Vesti-Nachrichten und in der maßgeblichen und nüchternen Talkshow und Kommentarsendung Bolshaya Igra (Das große Spiel), die von Wjatscheslaw Nikonow moderiert wird. In der russischen Fernsehberichterstattung wird das Geschehen an der Konfrontationslinie immer noch heruntergespielt. Es wird von einer verbesserten Positionierung gesprochen, vermutlich für eine noch bevorstehende Großoffensive. Die Berichterstattung aus den einzelnen Frontabschnitten nennt die umkämpften Siedlungen, die bereits von den russischen Truppen eingenommenen Teile und die vom Feind gehaltenen Teile. Aber die Kriegsberichterstatter vermitteln absichtlich kein Gefühl für die strategische Bedeutung dieser Orte oder dafür, wie Russland nicht nur ein paar Kilometer pro Tag vorrücken wird, sondern die vielen Dutzend Kilometer, die zurückgelegt werden müssen, um den Donbas vollständig zu befreien, ganz zu schweigen vom Erreichen des Dnjepr, der 1991 die Mitte der Ukraine bildete.

Wie ich in diesem Interview darlege, hat sich jedoch das, was die Soldaten an der Front den Reportern heute sagen, im Vergleich zu vor einigen Monaten deutlich verändert. Damals war klar, dass die Russen durch das Ausweichen vor den Drohnen und den Artilleriebeschuss stark beansprucht waren. Sie waren täglich mit mehreren Gegenangriffen konfrontiert, die sie abwehren mussten. Jetzt sind sich diese Soldaten ihrer waffentechnischen, taktischen und strategischen Überlegenheit ganz offensichtlich sehr sicher. Sie sind, wie Donald Trump in seinem jüngsten Telefonat mit Zelensky sagte, „eine Tötungsmaschine“, die sich durchsetzt.

                                                                       *****

Diejenigen unter Ihnen, die sich dieses Interview ansehen, werden es zu schätzen wissen, dass es auch eine Vielzahl von Themen aus der aktuellen internationalen Entwicklung abdeckt, beginnend mit einer Diskussion über die Feierlichkeiten zum Marinetag in St. Petersburg am vergangenen Sonntag. Der Marinetag 2024 war insofern bemerkenswert, als einige der neuesten Ergänzungen der russischen Flotte gezeigt wurden, als zum ersten Mal in meiner jahrzehntelangen Erfahrung ausländische Schiffe an dieser Veranstaltung teilnahmen, als ausländische, vor allem BRICS-Delegationen hoher Marineoffiziere nach Russland flogen, um daran teilzunehmen, und als Wladimir Putin eine sehr wichtige Rede über Russlands Antwort auf die Pläne der USA hielt, 2026 in Deutschland atomar bestückte Tomahawk-Marschflugkörper mit großer Reichweite sowie noch zu produzierende amerikanische Hyperschallraketen zu installieren.

Was die ausländische Beteiligung anbelangt, so möchte ich hier hinzufügen, was ich in dem Interview nicht gesagt habe: dass dies ein weiterer Beweis dafür ist, dass die dramatischen Erfolge Russlands auf dem Schlachtfeld und die offensichtliche Überlegenheit seiner Waffen im Vergleich zu dem, was die Vereinigten Staaten und die NATO an die Ukraine liefern, die Voraussetzungen dafür schaffen, dass sich viele Länder des globalen Südens mit dem Sieger solidarisieren. Das ist einfach ein Grundgesetz des menschlichen Verhaltens.

In unserem Gespräch ging es auch um die Frage, was die Russen von Kamala Harris halten, da sie nun die voraussichtliche Präsidentschaftskandidatin der Demokratischen Partei ist, was von der Forderung des polnischen Außenministers Radoslaw Sikorski zu halten ist, dass ukrainische Männer im wehrpflichtigen Alter in der EU nach Hause in die Ukraine geschickt werden sollten, um sich Zelenskys Armee anzuschließen, und um einige andere bemerkenswerte Nachrichten der letzten zehn Tage seit meinem letzten Auftritt in seiner Sendung.

Transcription below by a reader

Nima R. Alkhorshid: 00:05
Let’s start with the Navy Day Parade in St. Petersburg. You want to share something with us.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
From time to time, from year to year, I attended this Navy Day Parade, which was really just a parade of ships, as they say, going back to the early 1990s, maybe even the late 1980s. I’m married to a Russian and her father was a rear admiral, not manning a ship, but teaching at various Navy institutes, lecturing. And so he would go every year to that Navy parade. He got privileged access to the banks of Neva. And when we were in Petersburg, every few years, we would join him. And then, of course, in this millennium, I’ve gone on my own whenever I was in Petersburg in July.

01:11
However, what happened this past Sunday was, to my knowledge, quite novel. There were never, in the past, participation of foreign vessels in this naval parade. This time, you had definitely two Chinese ships, and I understand one Indian ship, perhaps something from Algeria, though it’s not entirely clear. There were always foreign delegations, but of a very specific kind. They were in the past the naval attachés in the embassies of all accredited countries in Russia. So, they would send one or two officers or just general purpose diplomats who were not necessarily all expert in questions of naval matters.

02:07
And what happened this year was not just the participation of these several vessels, but a very large delegation, primarily from BRICS countries, but not only, who came from the country of origin. That is to say, they flew in precisely to participate in this event. That never happened before, to my knowledge. And it had a very clear purpose. And that was to demonstrate the fact that these countries are on the side of Russia in the present confrontation with the collective West. The Indian presence was of course most remarkable because Modi has been always careful treading a narrow path between East and West and that he demonstrated his solidarity with Russia in a military activity is worthy of mention.

03:08
Of course the other item, which was picked up by major media in the West, was the speech that Vladimir Putin made, which was very important, and he was setting out Russia’s response to the latest provocation coming out of Washington with the acquiescence of Germany, namely the announcement that the United States would be sending to Germany in 2026 its medium- to long-range cruise missiles with nuclear carrying capability. This, as Vladimir Putin said in his speech, takes us back to the to the Cold War in the 1980s, when the United States, in response to Russian medium-range missiles, mostly SS-20s, dispatched Pershings. Also these are cruise missiles capable of hitting Moscow and other Russian cities.

04:19
There was enormous demonstration in Germany, popular demonstrations against this development, against turning Germany into a potential battlefield between the United States and Russia, because of the basing of these of these missiles so threatening to Russia on German soil. The latest announcement which seems to have been given by the United States telling Scholz what to do without even naming the towns in Germany where the the missiles would be installed. This has so far evoked no response, no critical response in Germany.

05:07
And Putin used the opportunity of this very important Naval Day parade to make a speech of considerable importance. Firstly, that Russia would be responding in a mirror-image way to anything that the United States does, explaining that Russia is prepared to forgo its moratorium on installation of missiles of this kind. In the case of Russia, he’s speaking about medium-range missiles, which would be capable of destroying virtually every city or every military installation all across Europe.

05:52
But what are we talking about? That was not in the speech, but it was on talk shows which followed the speech, in which Russian experts were explaining that what is at issue here is the expansion of the Kinzhal to a much greater range. It has, I think, it will have a 1500 kilometer range, and that will be extended and so that virtually all of Europe is covered by Kinzhals. It is also noted on the talk shows that the American decision to place these long-range missiles, capable of hitting virtually the whole of Russia, in Germany now, was justified in the remark that Russia has missiles in Kaliningrad capable of reaching US bases and other military assets in Europe.

06:54
However, as the same talk shows reminded us, those assets, Russian assets, have been there for five years, and no one said a word about them. So, the decision to now, in 2026, install these missiles from the United States is really an escalation in the war of words and potentially in military confrontation between Russia and the United States, initiated by the United States, and taking place on the territory of Europe and of Germany in particular. So, for these various reasons, his speech [on] Naval Day in St. Petersburg had considerable importance, only part of which has been picked up by the Western press.

Alkhorshid: 07:46
Yeah. In your opinion, when it comes to Europe and their policy right now, do you understand why they’re trying to convince Zelensky to continue the conflict in Ukraine? Because it seems that Zelensky tried to talk with Trump, and Trump was warning him that the conflict, the continuation of the conflict is not working for Ukraine nor for the United States. And right now it seems that Europeans are totally in favor of the continuation of the conflict. Can we understand what’s in their mind?

Doctorow: 08:24
Well, in that telephone conversation between Zelensky and Trump, to which you’re alluding, we only know what one side said, or what one side says that he said, that is Trump’s going to the press and saying that he reminded Zelensky that Russia is a war machine, and that Russia has a history of valor and of successful military missions unequaled by any other country. And he took it back to Napoleon and, of course, World War II. That’s what Trump says that he said. We don’t know what Zelensky said. It may be, as you just suggested, that Zelensky wanted to use this opportunity to establish a tie with Trump and so that he was considering actively Trump’s offer to be a broker in a negotiated settlement of the war.

09:27
But it could also be that Zelensky remains delusional in every way and was trying to persuade Trump to rethink his decision to stop funding the war and to instead to come to Ukraine’s aid should he be elected. So we don’t know what he said, but it is simply interesting that he made the effort to reach out to Donald Trump, and I think that’s explained by the fact that Kamala’s rise in popularity and the funding that she’s gotten in this start of this honeymoon month after locking in the nomination for the Democratic presidential candidate in this period hadn’t yet become apparent, and Trump’s high ratings and high likelihood of election in November was still hanging in the air. So Zelensky was trying to re-insure himself that he had some sort tie with Trump, in the possibility, if not eventuality, that Trump will win the elections.

Alkhorshid:10:55
Do we know what’s the opinion on the part of Russians on Kamala Harris and the way that she’s talking about the conflict in Ukraine?

Doctorow:
Just watch Megyn Kelly and you’ve got their take on Kamala Harris. The Russians, on their talk shows, they have taken the gloves off. And they’re saying what they really think about these monstrous people who are considered to be the leaders in the West and particularly in the United States. On the Solovyov show, the host was explaining to the audience that Harris began her career lying on her back. And this, I said, was given in some detail on Megyn Kelly’s program, making reference to her position as a lover of the Black mayor. At the time, he was the head of the assembly, and he went on to become the mayor of San Francisco. And he, in this love relationship with Harris, introduced her to the big donors and all the movers and shakers in California politics, which gave her a leg up, which gave her a big advantage as she proceeded to make a career in California and become the District Attorney and Attorney General.

12:28
So, that aspect reminding us that from the very beginning Kamala Harris made her moves on the most vulgar manner, and not on the basis of merit, not because she was an outstanding law student, or any of the trappings of success that have been earned by merit and talent, which the Democratic Party is trying to put at her feet today.

Alkhorshid: 13:06
Can we say the last objective of the Russian army right now in Ukraine is denazification and demilitarization of the Ukrainian army and how [can Russia] achieve that? is that going to be militarily or politically or a combination of both?

Doctorow:
I think it’s a combination of both, but the military is the dominant side. What we’re witnessing now– and even in the “Financial Times”, even in the “New York Times”, there are articles day after day explaining– that the Russian army is progressing, advancing, and is taking advantage of weaknesses in the 1,000- or 800-kilometer line of confrontation. And there are weaknesses, of course, and we know why. It’s not a generalized issue of lack of manpower, though that is significant. It is the fact that the Russians have drawn to the Kharkov region the best brigades, the best-trained and the best-equipped units of the Ukrainian army, and there are necessarily weak spots in that vast line of confrontation, which the Russians are exploiting.

14:28
Our newspapers go on to say that the Russians are throwing waves of troops against the Ukrainians, with the suggestion that the Russians are experiencing heavy losses. Well, I watch the Russian daily news, and I see the interviews with their soldiers in the field. From the past, I can say that those interviews seem to be quite legitimate, to be quite open and honest, because the interviewees were saying things that showed the stress and strain they were experiencing.

And what I see now is a lot of confidence and high professionalism. And yes they are they are destroying the Ukrainian army, and they’re doing it in a way that logically means that the Russians are suffering very small losses. They are using their their three-ton bombs, they are using their heavy artillery, they are using their drones, and first they are demolishing what fortifications the Ukrainians have in the various settlements that are under attack. And only when they have massively destroyed what could have protected the Ukrainian soldiers do they send their shock troops in to finish the job.

16:05
So I would– given all of the equipment and the skills that the Russians have acquired over the last two years, and particularly in electronic warfare, the Russians had zero preparation in drones. And this war has become not only a war of artillery, but a war of drones. The Russians are now catching Ukrainian drones, which are reconnaissance drones, putting bombs on them and sending them back home, which, considering the identification of these drones, they would go back where they came from.

16:48
So this is a war unlike any other. And I can say that the Russians are not resting on their laurels. They know very well that the present war is new and that they have adapted and learned skills which they never had before and they’re manufacturing or modifying existing weapons to suit the battlefield as it is today. But at the same time, in light of the announcements made by the United States about his intention of putting new weapons systems– and I omtted one fact. I spoke about the cruise missiles, the Tomahawks, but the announcement also stated that the United States will be shipping to Germany hypersonic missiles, which the states practically speaking today don’t have.

17:42
So what the Russians are saying to themselves is that their advantage, the window of opportunity that they exploited in February 2022– when they were, without any question, years ahead of the United States and of any West European country in developing fifth-generation fighter jets, in developing the hypersonic missiles– that is diminishing with time. And they are actively pursuing the creation of yet a new wave of advanced armor and other military equipment for the next confrontation that they expect to have with the United States in Europe and elsewhere.

Alkhorshid: 18:32
Victor Orban just recently said, Russia is different from how we were made to see it. And, in your opinion, is the image of Russia changing in the mind of Europeans or is it just happening in the mind of Orban and Fico?

Doctorow:
Well, I think the most important thing is the image of Russia is changing in the minds of Russians. I have been invited to contribute a chapter in a book that will be published in England, a chapter devoted to Russian’s self-perception and how, in the case of Russia, wars make nations. In the West it has come up, and articles have been written about how the war is creating a Ukrainian nation. Well, but not a word has been said about how the war is creating a Russian nation, in a way that didn’t exist before.

So that is the most important thing, how Russians think of themselves. And they do now have a level of patriotism and a level of commitment and a level of self-confidence that did not exist before. In the past you had, I can call them fifth column, but let’s be more charitable and simply say skeptics and doubters of Russia’s ability, based on three percent of the world’s GNP, to be a superpower and to be a rival to the United States. This was the political line, say, of Yabloko, which was the premier liberal democratic party opposing Putin in the last presidential election.

20:21
Now the reality is that they have succeeded and that their economy is now rising faster than the global economy is. Something like five percent or five and a half percent. So on the Russian side, there’s been a very big change. As for European side, I regret to say no. I don’t believe that Europeans, other than Mr. Orban, Mr. Fico of Slovakia appreciate the changes that are taking place in Russia, which are bringing it into a wholly new age of enough sovereignty, as Mr. Putin says, meaning that they are becoming self-sufficient and developing state-financed capital investment in manufacturing, which they could have, should have done for decades past, but never did since they were hoping to have some kind of place in the global economic and trade structures with more limited contribution of their best production and buying in most everything else.

21:48
Well, that model has gone by the boards, and Russia is today following a master plan for increasing its industrial production that Soviet Russia would have been proud of, but was unable to implement for lack of talent at the top. Mr. Putin has an extremely talented and very hardworking team that are achieving miracles for Russia today, unlike Soviet Russia in its last decades.

Alkhorshid: 22:32
Did you [see] the conditions that Mike Pompeo was putting out about a conflict, about having a ceasefire in Ukraine? He was talking about Ukraine being part of the EU and NATO. How realistic are these type of visions right now in the United States and how influential he can be on the future Trump administration?

Doctorow: 22:55
Well, critics of Donald Trump have pointed to this very statement by Pompeo to suggest, “Oh, don’t believe, it’s not a new Donald Trump”, that he puts forward Pompeo, what he did, introduced him at the session of the Republican National Convention, the evening of his, that he accepted the nomination, Pompeo was there. And it’s said, “Oh yes, Pompeo was saying these things, so don’t believe that Trump has changed his politics.”

But I beg to differ. Pompeo is not close to Trump today. Pompeo is, as I understand, on the pay of the Ukrainians. He is doing some consulting or some other contractual work with Ukraine and therefore anything that he says must be construed as Pompeo as an agent of Kiev and not as Pompeo as a past and future colleague of Donald Trump.

Alkhorshid: 23:57
But do you think that Donald Trump is going to be influenced by these kind of– I’m not talking specifically about Pompeo– these people who are more connected with the neocons, with these people with deep state, how can Donald Trump decide not to have them in his administration?

Doctorow:
Look, I have identified myself in the past couple of weeks on the side of Donald Trump, certainly in the contest against Biden or now against Kamala Harris, not because I’m a deep believer in the consistency or the intellectual depth of Donald Trump. I have placed great faith in his nominee for vice president as keeping him on the straight and narrow road towards peace. If I had my preference, my preference would be the only candidate who was intellectually committed to finding a peaceful solution, and that is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And since I made some contributions to him, I have a barrage of emails from him every day, of course, asking for still more contributions, but reminding me that his latest polls showed that in a contest between him and Kamala Harris, or between him and Donald Trump, I should say, he, RFK Jr., would win against Trump handsomely.

25:30
That may be, but it’s never going to happen. I have to be realistic. Third-party candidates never get very far. In American political life, they are no more than spoilers. As much as I admire the integrity and the consistency of RFK on the question of dealing with Ukraine and many other matters, I have to face the realities of political life. And therefore, I have placed my bet on Donald Trump. But as you say, no one and can predict with certainty that he will not make the same disastrous mistakes that he did in his first administration, appointing people who were … persuaded by the policies that contradicted directly what Trump announced his intention to do. Whether it was Tillerson or whether it was Pompeo, these were terrible appointments. So I say that I back Trump with my fingers crossed.

Alkhorshid: 26:41
Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski was talking about creating unbearable conditions for Ukrainians in the EU in order to force them to return home. Do you think these type of policies on the part of European Union would work for Ukraine? Is that possible, logically?

Doctorow:
Look, I wouldn’t take seriously anything that Sikorski says. He has said some most outrageous things in the past, including about the relationship between Poland and the United States, which are not to be repeated on air. The remarks that he made about sending Ukrainians back, I think that is simply posturing and trying to curry favor with anti-Russian citizens in Poland, of which there are quite a few. I don’t believe that anyone in Western Europe is going to visit the homes of Ukrainian refugees in their midst and forcibly send conscription-age males back to Ukraine to fill the empty ranks of Zelensky’s army. That is unrealistic.

28:00
Moreover, I think about the very ugly statements that yesterday, the day before yesterday, Sikorski made about Viktor Orban, saying that he should leave the EU and make a security pact with Moscow. This is very unpolitical, very undiplomatic, for– it is political in the sense of currying favor with the anti-Russian contingents within the political elites of Poland. But as something coming out of the mouth of a minister of foreign affairs, it is terrible lack of professionalism. And so I’d say I take with a grain of salt anything that Mr. Sikorski says.

Alkhorshid: 28:57
When it comes to Bashar al-Assad’s visit to Moscow, how is the media in Russia talking about this visit, and how do you find the main objectives of this visit?

Doctorow:
Well, the Russian media did not say a great deal about it.They had little to work on, because the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Mr. Putin’s office said very little about it. I have written about it, but I acknowledge that what I said is speculation. That is to say that Assad and Putin were conferring just who does what, what dance steps they’re to follow if the situation explodes in the neighborhood of Syria due to Israeli attack on Hezbollah.

Now, I think from Mr. Putin’s standpoint, that visit was important– of course, Washington knows about it– as a message to Washington to be very careful before it intervenes in the Israeli-Hezbollah or Lebanon war that may be coming soon. The United States has big naval assets, I believe it’s an aircraft carrier or escort that are now very close to Israel with the intent to intimidate Lebanon and to give some assurance to Israel that the United States would back them if they attack. Of course, that’s not what Mr. Blinken is calling it. He’s saying that they’re there to ensure that this does not escalate. But the reality of the presence says otherwise.

30:44
The Russians are there. The Russians have a naval base in Syria. It’s mostly for repairing and refitting and supplying Russian fleet in the Mediterranean. They also have an air base in Syria. And so it was a reminder to Washington that Russia is prepared to intervene if necessary. It’s also a reminder to Israel that their attacks on sites in Syria– particularly repeated attacks near Aleppo, which were directed according to the Israelis against arms caches of Hezbollah in Syrian territory or against goods transiting Syria on their way to Lebanon and Hezbollah– that this has been tolerated. Russia has never in the past given air defense to Syria, but it certainly is capable of doing so. And if it were, it would change entirely the calculations of the Israeli army, or if not the calculations, the possibilities of dealing with Hezbollah for the Israeli army and air force.

32:19
So, it was a reminder that Russia is there and Russia is interested. I think it’s also a signal to Iran of the same nature, because the first country that will have to come to the aid of Lebanon, if there is an attack on Hezbollah, is Iran. And it would give them considerable comfort to know that the Russians may well be at their side.

Alkhorshid: 32:48
And how did you find Netanyahu’s visit to the US Congress and the way that he was changing the rhetoric from Hezbollah to Iran, let’s go after Iran, let’s fight Iran. Is he trying to go to war with Iran or he’s trying to make a war between the United States and Iran?

Doctorow:
I think it’s a combination of that. The key has always been after Iran. Iran. This goes back more than a decade. Iran has been the target of all of his addresses on the international arena. Iran was always a week or two away from a nuclear weapon. And this was the red flag that he was holding out in front of the Americans to encourage their support for any attack that Israel would make on Iran. Israel by itself does not have the force to deal with Iran without American support. So he is preparing Congress — and he apparently got their their acquiescence — in proceeding with a war on Hezbollah with a very high possibility, if not probability, that that will progress to a war on Iran.

34:14
However, if he has this IOU or this promissory note in his pocket, it is a promissory note of doubtful value, because there is big debate in the States whether or not the States should get engaged in a war with Iran. In Washington, there are some people who understand very well that the military capabilities of Iran are much greater than Netanyahu would suggest. The ability of Iran, for example, to devastate the many American military installations in the Middle East with missile attacks is something that must give Washington and Mr. Biden’s team pause and limit their enthusiasm for supporting Netanyahu in an attack on Iran.

Alkhorshid: 35:10
But when it comes to Hezbollah, we know that recently before these new tensions coming up, the Biden administration said to Netanyahu, “If you want to fight Hezbollah, you’re going to be alone and we’re not going to be there.” And right now, do you think that they’re changing their mind?

Doctorow:
I think so. I think there is a debate which we don’t see on the television screens, but there is a debate in Congress over how far America can or should go. And as I said, there are cooler heads among military who understand that that may be a step too far for the United States to get embroiled in a war with Iran for the sake of satisfying Mr. Netanyahu’s ambitions of long standing to have such support.

Alkhorshid: 36:02
The other part of this policy in the Middle East is what China is doing and what you just mentioned about Bashar al-Assad and maybe Erdogan talking to each other, as Russia wanted to do that. And how do you see the changes that are happening in terms of what Russia and China are doing right now?

Doctorow:
Well, the two are not allies in a military sense because China has enshrined policy of not entering into a military bloc and of maintaining its freedom to engage or not to engage in other people’s wars. The Chinese haven’t been in a military conflict for more than 40 years, and that’s not an accident. That was a policy choice. So, they will join the Russians in active combat only if it is utterly necessary to avoid Russian defeat or embarrassment or humiliation that would reflect on themselves. because Russia is a very important support to China logistically, in raw materials and diplomatically.

37:25
So the Chinese could not allow Russia to be humiliated in a way that might lead to political difficulties, political conflict within Russia. They want a stable Russia at their side. The fact that the Chinese sent naval vessels halfway across the world to participate in what is a ceremonial event, this Navy Day in Russia, is an additional point to what we saw a couple of weeks ago, when it was announced that Chinese forces are present at the Polish and Ukrainian borders on the Belarus side in what are called anti-terrorist joint exercises. Well, the anti-terrorists, it’s not a misnomer. What they had in mind is the kind of attacks that took place in Belgorod, province of Russia Federation, when [Ukraine] sent various groups including some anti-Kremlin Russians to attack in a terrorist manner the residential communities in Belgorod. There has been discussion that the Ukrainians and/or the Poles have had similar ideas with respect to Belarus. As we know, Poland, together with Lithuania, has been a very strong supporter of the anti-Lukashenko so-called president of Belarus, who is now in exile.

38:21
And add to this the Chinese-Russian joint patrol in the Bering Sea close to Alaska last week as another demonstration that when it comes to, when push comes to shove, if necessary, China will stand by Russia as a military partner confronting any part of the West as necessary. It is a pushback to Jens Stoltenberg and Washington’s idea of an Asian NATO and the Russians and Chinese were saying that the Eurasian continent has two sides, and if you want to concentrate on the eastern side, we, Chinese and Russians, can jointly concentrate on the western side. So think twice about your idea of an Asian NATO built on [AUKUS].

Alkhorshid: 40:29
Yeah, just to wrap up this session, we thought that Macron is not going to send French mercenaries to Ukraine, but we’ve learned that they did that. And how [can we] put the picture of these changes that are happening in France, in terms of Le Pen, how they can change the policy when it comes to sending mercenaries to Ukraine, and why they couldn’t do that so far?

Doctorow: 40:57
Well, in the person of Emanuel Macron, we have a very inconsistent, very superficial politician, who, I mean, if we want to say that Donald Trump was transactional and changed his policies very often or too often, one can say certainly the same thing about Macron, who is a different personality from Trump, but nonetheless shares this. He will do anything to get the microphone, he will do anything to present himself as leading Europe and the West either into an agreement with Russia or into a war with Russia. Which it will be depends on the moment, and is not a consistent policy line of the man. I think what the Russians are now saying about Macron bears mention, they’re calling him the Blue Rooster. They have no hesitation to call him out as a homosexual. And they have used the footage, the film footage, from the obscene opening ceremony of the Olympics to demonstrate their point about the corruption, degradation, and likely suicide of France as leading Western Europe to its doom. So Mr. Macron’s sending some mercenaries to help the Ukrainians — it’s a token. These are not massive quantities of men and certainly not normal French soldiers. But his ability to flip-flop according to what he thinks will be, assert his purposes, his opportunism in that respect, cannot be underestimated.

I was delighted to be invited by Sputnik Globe to comment on Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski’s radio appeal to EU member states to ‘encourage’ draft age Ukrainian men living in their midst to go home and fight for their country.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240726/only-brute-force-can-force-draft-age-ukrainians-in-europe-to-go-home-to-face-near-certain-death-1119521472.html

For those who never knew or who have forgotten, Sikorski is a prominent bearer of what I would call the ‘Polish nobility syndrome,’ by which I mean visceral hatred of Russia and less than humane feelings for Ukrainians. He is also the husband of one of America’s best-known Russia-bashers, the historian and journalist Anne Applebaum.

The syndrome can be traced back at least four centuries to the age of nonstop Russian-Polish wars over control of East Central Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea. There was a brief interlude in 1610-12 when the Poles took advantage of a dynastic crisis in Muscovy and gloried in holding the Russian capital captive, but that joy was short lived. It was followed by periodic outbreaks of warfare which in the mid and late 18^th century resulted in Russia’s joining Austria and Prussia in carving up Poland so that the country disappeared from the map for 120 years or so. During that period of non-existence, Poland’s ruling class nonetheless put up 100,000 Polish soldiers and officers to fight within Napoleon’s Grande Armée that invaded Russia in 1812. Many or most stayed behind in unmarked graves. Then there were several unsuccessful Polish revolts against their fate as subjects of the Russian Empire in the 19^th century which led many to spend the remainder of their lives enjoying the very special climate of Siberia. Dostoevsky wrote about them disparagingly in his House of the Dead.

The twentieth century brought back Poland to the European map following WWI and gave it the force to engage the Red Army and fight for its eastern borders with some notable success. But, alas, WWII was very unkind to the Poles and when it ended, they found themselves on the wrong side of what became the Iron Curtain. They were given several decades including a spell of martial law to bite their tongues and suffer the humiliation of Communist rule under Russian sway.

This is the sad background to the revanchism we see in the parties that have run Poland since its resurrection as a sovereign state in 1988-1989. Mr. Sikorski is a proper standard bearer of Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform party that is beloved by the European Institutions for being Europe-friendly in contrast to their main opponents, the Law and Justice Party, who season their Russophobia with a dash of Europe-skepticism. However, I am doubtful that many European member states will heed Sikorski’s call to ship out Ukrainian refugees to Kiev against their will in order to re-fill Zelensky’s depleted army units.

For those who wonder about my remarking the ‘less than humane feelings for Ukrainians’ among Polish leaders, I recommend perusing Gogol’s Taras Bulba or looking closely into the ongoing Polish-Ukrainian disputes over the mass murders of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia committed by Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators during WWII. These spats even get mention in the Western mainstream press if you pay close attention.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Nur „rohe Gewalt“ kann wehrpflichtige Ukrainer in Europa dazu zwingen, nach Hause
zu gehen und zu kämpfen: „Sputnik Globe“-Interview

Ich habe mich sehr gefreut, von Sputnik Globe eingeladen worden zu sein, den Radioappell
des polnischen Außenministers Radoslaw Sikorski an die EU-Mitgliedsstaaten zu
kommentieren, die in ihrer Mitte lebenden ukrainischen Männer im wehrpflichtigen Alter zu
„ermutigen“, nach Hause zu gehen und für ihr Land zu kämpfen.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20240726/only-brute-force-can-force-draft-age-ukrainians-in-
europe-to-go-home-to-face-near-certain-death-1119521472.html
Für diejenigen, die es noch nicht wussten oder es vergessen haben: Sikorski ist ein
prominenter Vertreter dessen, was ich als „polnisches Adelssyndrom“ bezeichnen würde,
d.h., er hegt einen ausgeprägten Hass auf Russland und hegt wenig humane Gefühle
gegenüber den Ukrainern. Er ist auch der Ehemann einer der bekanntesten amerikanischen
Russland-Basher, der Historikerin und Journalistin Anne Applebaum.
Das Syndrom lässt sich mindestens vier Jahrhunderte zurückverfolgen, bis in die Zeit der
ununterbrochenen russisch-polnischen Kriege um die Kontrolle über Ostmitteleuropa von der
Ostsee bis zum Schwarzen Meer. Es gab ein kurzes Intermezzo in den Jahren 1610-12, als
die Polen eine dynastische Krise in Moskau ausnutzten und sich damit brüsteten, die
russische Hauptstadt gefangen zu halten, aber diese Freude war nur von kurzer Dauer. Es
folgten regelmäßige Ausbrüche von Kriegen, die Mitte und Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts dazu
führten, dass Russland zusammen mit Österreich und Preußen Polen aufteilte, so dass das
Land für etwa 120 Jahre von der Landkarte verschwand. Während dieser Zeit der
Nichtexistenz stellte Polens herrschende Klasse dennoch 100.000 polnische Soldaten und
Offiziere auf, die in Napoleons Grande Armée kämpften, die 1812 in Russland
einmarschierte. Viele oder die meisten blieben in ungekennzeichneten Gräbern zurück. Dann
gab es im 19. Jahrhundert mehrere erfolglose polnische Aufstände gegen ihr Schicksal als
Untertanen des Russischen Reiches, was viele dazu veranlasste, den Rest ihres Lebens in
dem ganz besonderen Klima Sibiriens zu verbringen. Dostojewski schrieb in seinem Haus
der Toten abschätzig über sie.
Das 20. Jahrhundert brachte Polen nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg auf die europäische
Landkarte zurück und gab dem Land die Kraft, sich mit der Roten Armee anzulegen und mit
beachtlichem Erfolg um seine Ostgrenzen zu kämpfen. Aber leider war der Zweite Weltkrieg
sehr unfreundlich zu den Polen, und als er zu Ende war, fanden sie sich auf der falschen
Seite des späteren Eisernen Vorhangs wieder. Mehrere Jahrzehnte lang mussten sie sich
auf die Zunge beißen und die Demütigung der kommunistischen Herrschaft unter russischer
Führung erdulden, einschließlich des Kriegsrechts.
Dies ist der traurige Hintergrund für den Revanchismus, den wir in den Parteien sehen, die
Polen seit seiner Wiederauferstehung als souveräner Staat in den Jahren 1988-1989 regiert
haben. Herr Sikorski ist ein echter Bannerträger von Donald Tusks Partei Bürgerplattform,
die von den europäischen Institutionen für ihre Europafreundlichkeit geliebt wird, im
Gegensatz zu ihren Hauptgegnern, der Partei Recht und Gerechtigkeit, die ihre Russophobie
mit einer Prise Europaskepsis würzt. Ich bezweifle jedoch, dass viele europäische
Mitgliedstaaten Sikorskis Aufruf folgen werden, ukrainische Flüchtlinge gegen ihren Willen
nach Kiew zu schicken, um Zelenskis dezimierte Armeeeinheiten wieder aufzufüllen.
Denjenigen, die sich über meine Bemerkung über die „wenig menschlichen Gefühle für die
Ukrainer“ unter den polnischen Führern wundern, empfehle ich, Gogols Taras Bulba zu lesen
oder sich mit den anhaltenden polnisch-ukrainischen Streitigkeiten über die von den
ukrainischen Nazi-Kollaborateuren während des Zweiten Weltkriegs begangenen
Massenmorde an Polen in Wolhynien und Ostgalizien näher zu befassen. Diese
Streitigkeiten werden sogar in der westlichen Presse erwähnt, wenn man genau hinschaut.

You may be forgiven for not having heard anything about the visit to Moscow of Syria’s President Bashar Assad, because neither Russian nor Syrian official sources published more than a photograph or two of the two leaders meeting and saying a few words to the press. You would know still less about what was discussed between them aside from some generalities. However, for Iran’s global broadcaster Press TV this was possibly a significant event for their neighborhood and they invited commentary, which I and one other invitee sought to provide.

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/130226

The visit was explained officially as marking the 80^th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. That gave an aspect of normality to what was, in effect, anything but normal.

Indeed, the entire episode was carried out in the greatest secrecy. Assad flew in to Moscow late on Wednesday evening but the news of his visit was released only on Thursday morning, after he had already safely touched down in Damascus from his flight home. He is said to have spent two hours in direct conversation with President Putin, without any time lost to a formal dinner or other ceremonial distractions.

This was Assad’s first visit to Moscow since March 2023 and there surely was a lot for the two leaders to discuss face to face. As my fellow panelist on the Press TV program suggests, one item was surely the possibilities of arranging a three-way meeting with President Erdogan of Turkey, who is said to be ready to restore relations with Assad that were broken when Ankara chose to support the Islamist fighters against his government during the Syrian civil war back in 2015. And in theory that could take place when Putin makes his still unscheduled trip to Turkey later this summer.

However, I think the bigger subject on their agenda was Russian military assistance to Syria in the context of the present Israeli rampage in the neighborhood and most specifically with a view to improving Syria’s ineffective air defenses. On 3 June, Israel made yet another jet fighter attack near the Syrian city of Aleppo.  Israeli attacks on Hezbollah arms caches in Syria and on supplies transiting Syria from Iran have been a regular occurrence going back to the civil war. But now, when there is a probability of Israel unleashing all out war on Hezbollah in Lebanon, the military supplies passing through Syria to Lebanon assume critical importance for the Axis of Resistance.

Let us remember that Russian military aid to Syria in 2015 and 2016 saved the Damascus government from being overwhelmed by Islamic fighters that were supported by the United States and its allies. However, Russia, which maintained a naval base in Syrian Tartus and an air base in Khmeimin, has never intervened to stop Israel attacks on Syria that Jerusalem claimed were purely for Israeli defense. Clearly the time has come to help the Syrians protect their air space and their sovereignty. A further context is that Russian-Israeli relations have cooled substantially over Israeli support for Ukraine. Moreover, a higher profile of Russia in Syria would be intended to offset the growing U.S. naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean, which Washington says is there to prevent an escalation of Israeli-Hezbollah fighting, but objectively speaking, more likely to have the opposite effect.

Finally, it may well be that Russia is about to provide Assad or pro-Iranian militia in Syria with its powerful missiles and drones to raise the effectiveness of their attacks on the illegal U.S. military bases in Syria. This would be entirely in line with Vladimir Putin’s recent threats to engage in the same kind of proxy warfare against the USA that Washington is pursuing in the Ukrainian war against Russia.

Clearly, a two-hour meeting between presidents could not go into the specifics of Russia’s greater assistance to Damascus in the coming days. But it prepares the way for their respective generals to work out the details of who does what now.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus) followed by full transcript of the Press TV program

Der Assad-Besuch in Moskau vor zwei Tagen, von dem Sie nichts gehört haben: Iran’s Press TV

Es sei Ihnen verziehen, wenn Sie nichts über den Besuch des syrischen Präsidenten Bashar Assad in Moskau gehört haben, denn weder russische noch syrische offizielle Quellen haben mehr als ein oder zwei Fotos von den beiden Staatsoberhäuptern veröffentlicht, auf denen sie sich treffen und ein paar Worte an die Presse richten. Über das, was zwischen ihnen besprochen wurde, erfährt man außer einigen Allgemeinplätzen noch weniger. Für den iranischen Rundfunksender Press TV war dies jedoch möglicherweise ein bedeutendes Ereignis in der Nachbarschaft, und sie baten um Kommentare, die ich und ein anderer Eingeladener zu liefern versuchten.

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/130226

Der Besuch wurde offiziell mit dem 80. Jahrestag der Aufnahme diplomatischer Beziehungen zwischen den beiden Ländern begründet. Dies verlieh dem, was in Wirklichkeit alles andere als normal war, einen Anschein von Normalität.

In der Tat wurde die gesamte Episode unter größter Geheimhaltung abgewickelt. Assad flog am späten Mittwochabend nach Moskau, aber die Nachricht von seinem Besuch wurde erst am Donnerstagmorgen veröffentlicht, nachdem er bereits sicher in Damaskus gelandet war. Er soll zwei Stunden lang direkt mit Präsident Putin gesprochen haben, ohne dass die Zeit durch ein formelles Abendessen oder andere zeremonielle Ablenkungen verloren ging.

Dies war der erste Besuch Assads in Moskau seit März 2023, und es gab für die beiden Staatsoberhäupter sicherlich viel zu besprechen. Wie mein Kollege in der Press TV-Sendung andeutet, ging es unter anderem um die Möglichkeit, ein Dreiertreffen mit dem türkischen Präsidenten Erdogan zu arrangieren, dem nachgesagt wird, dass er bereit ist, die Beziehungen zu Assad wiederherzustellen, die unterbrochen wurden, als Ankara sich entschloss, die islamistischen Kämpfer gegen seine Regierung während des syrischen Bürgerkriegs im Jahr 2015 zu unterstützen. Theoretisch könnte dies bei Putins noch nicht geplanter Reise in die Türkei in diesem Sommer geschehen.

Ich denke jedoch, dass das wichtigere Thema auf ihrer Tagesordnung die russische Militärhilfe für Syrien im Zusammenhang mit dem derzeitigen israelischen Amoklauf in der Nachbarschaft und insbesondere im Hinblick auf die Verbesserung der unwirksamen syrischen Luftabwehr war. Am 3. Juni führte Israel einen weiteren Kampfjetangriff in der Nähe der syrischen Stadt Aleppo durch. Israelische Angriffe auf Waffenlager der Hisbollah in Syrien und auf Nachschub aus dem Iran, der durch Syrien transportiert wird, sind seit dem Bürgerkrieg regelmäßig zu beobachten. Aber jetzt, wo die Wahrscheinlichkeit besteht, dass Israel einen totalen Krieg gegen die Hisbollah im Libanon entfesselt, werden die militärischen Lieferungen, die durch Syrien in den Libanon gelangen, für die Achse des Widerstands von entscheidender Bedeutung.

Erinnern wir uns daran, dass die russische Militärhilfe für Syrien in den Jahren 2015 und 2016 die Regierung in Damaskus davor bewahrte, von islamistischen Kämpfern überwältigt zu werden, die von den USA und ihren Verbündeten unterstützt wurden. Russland, das einen Marinestützpunkt im syrischen Tartus und einen Luftwaffenstützpunkt in Chmeimin unterhält, hat jedoch nie eingegriffen, um die israelischen Angriffe auf Syrien zu stoppen, die laut Jerusalem ausschließlich der israelischen Verteidigung dienten. Es ist eindeutig an der Zeit, die Syrer beim Schutz ihres Luftraums und ihrer Souveränität zu unterstützen. Ein weiterer Hintergrund ist, dass sich die russisch-israelischen Beziehungen wegen der israelischen Unterstützung für die Ukraine erheblich abgekühlt haben. Darüber hinaus soll ein stärkeres Auftreten Russlands in Syrien die wachsende US-Marinepräsenz im östlichen Mittelmeer ausgleichen, die nach Angaben Washingtons eine Eskalation der Kämpfe zwischen Israel und der Hisbollah verhindern soll, objektiv gesehen aber eher das Gegenteil bewirkt.

Schließlich könnte es durchaus sein, dass Russland im Begriff ist, Assad oder pro-iranische Milizen in Syrien mit seinen leistungsstarken Raketen und Drohnen zu versorgen, um die Wirksamkeit ihrer Angriffe auf die illegalen US-Militärstützpunkte in Syrien zu erhöhen. Dies stünde ganz im Einklang mit den jüngsten Drohungen Wladimir Putins, die gleiche Art von Stellvertreterkrieg gegen die USA zu führen, die Washington im Ukraine-Krieg gegen Russland verfolgt.

Natürlich konnte bei einem zweistündigen Treffen zwischen den Präsidenten nicht auf die Einzelheiten der größeren russischen Unterstützung für Damaskus in den kommenden Tagen eingegangen werden. Aber es bereitet den Weg für die jeweiligen Generäle, um die Details auszuarbeiten, wer jetzt was tut.

Transcription below by a reader

PressTV 0:00
And now joining us for the program is Julia Kassem, journalist and political analyst from Moscow; and Gilbert Doctorow, independent international affairs analyst, joining us from Brussels. Hello, and I’d like to welcome you both to the program.

Julia, I guess we’ll start with you. And the significance, your initial thoughts on the significance of this trip, what good could possibly result from it, and the fact that Recep Tayyip Erdogan just a couple weeks ago actually alluded to the fact that if the three men sit down together, there could possibly be a normalization of ties between Ankara and Damascus.

Julia Kassem 0:35 [technical deficiency compromises transcription]
Yeah, absolutely. That’s one of the main agenda items in this meeting between President Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. That’s countering a lot of the terrorist forces that have strongholds in the north, the east of Syria, many who have been financed or supported by Turkey. So part of the– reaching some arrangement with Turkey between, you know, and normalizing relations between Turkey and Syria a bit involved, of course, some initiatives on Ankara’s part to stop funding and supporting these terror groups and to end its occupation of northeast Syria. And, of course, Moscow is going to be the site where any agreement between that is to take place.

1:28
The other, of course, most important point discussed in the meeting between Putin and Assad is the Zionist entity’s continued aggression. Right now, the backdrop of this meeting that kicked off yesterday in Moscow has been the ongoing visit by Netanyahu to the US to beg for more money to destroy and continue his genocide in Gaza, and to basically absolve himself of his war crimes, thinking that the US just, you know, basically doing his– having a standing ovation in Congress and getting the unconditional support that he has been getting from the Americans throughout this genocide would continue to solve the problem for a time, that reached international condemnation. Of course right now his coming here insures that the US is building up the Zionist entity. And constant granting of immunity in an international and bilateral context is slowly eroding away.

2:48
First the meeting of the Palestinian factions to reach some kind of community consensus with China. And now, between the meeting of Hu and his active player in the Middle East and Bashar al-Assad. Those are the main two points which were concerning mainly the Middle East. And of course, Syria has been also facing constant Israeli bombardment, which has massacred Syrians as well. And the Golan remains occupied by the Golan-resisting forces, an ally of Syria. It has the Zionist occupying positions in the Golan. So, of course, without any kind of, you know, any kind of initiative towards stopping the Zionist threat, as they continue to pump weapons and strike them and inject, any kind of signature initiative. Now, countries like Russia and China are basically stepping up and showing that —– eastward in terms of diplomacy, the U.S. has to have the final say in how conflict resolution can take place in the region. So, hopefully, yeah.

PressTV: 4:20
I didn’t mean to cut you off, sorry, but let me just, like, Mr. Doctorow showed a lot of patience. Let me just bring him in the conversation. I’ll come right back to you. Welcome to the conversation. Gilbert Doctorow, thanks for your patience. Hope you’re doing well out there in Brussels. Your initial thoughts, if you could, please, on the sit-down between these two gentlemen and why you feel Vladimir Putin has this perception that Syria’s health is vital for regional stability.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 4:49
The meeting took place in the greatest secrecy. It was announced that it took place this morning, though the meeting actually took place last night. Mr. Assad flew into Moscow late at night. He spent two hours in a conversation with President Putin. They didn’t have a dinner. There were no formalities about this. It was a working meeting, and then he flew out. And the the Russians and Syrians announced the visit only after Assad was back in Damascus.

5:21
So, one may assume that something quite important was going on. Perhaps it has to do with the relations with Turkey. Perhaps it has to do, I think more likely, with the military situation in the neighborhood. On the 3rd of June, Aleppo was struck by Israeli jets, and several people were killed. This type of attack by Israel has gone on repeatedly, without any effort by the Russians to help the Syrians defend their sovereignty. The Russian intervention in Syria in their civil war was enormously important. It saved the Assad government. It managed to crush the Islamic extremists who were receiving support from the United States and other Western powers. But it did not mean, it did not entail the security against Israel. The attacks by Israel on Syrian territory were primarily aimed at supplies coming from Iran into Syria, and coming into Syria and going further.

6:30
Well, where is further? Going to Lebanon, obviously. That was not so important in months past as it is today, because of the possibility of a full war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. In this case, the transit of Iranian weapons and other support to Lebanon is of vital importance, and I would imagine that one of the subjects for discussion was how the Russians can help protect Syrian airspace and prevent further Israeli attacks on weaponry that’s entering from Iran and is directed to Lebanon by way of Syria. That could be a subject.

7:18
Otherwise, they certainly have to consider the overall regional situation, the possibility of American intervention in support of Israel when Israel should decide to make an all-out strike on Lebanon, and to do to Beirut what it has done to Gaza, as Mr. Netanyahu has threatened. So these certainly were subjects for a two and a half hour discussion, I think mostly about the military situation in the neighborhood.

PressTV: 7:49
And Julia, thank you Gilbert, and Julia, how ironic is it that we never sit down and hear a conversation which refers to instability in the region without Washington and Tel Aviv being dragged into the forefront?

Kassem: 8:06
Yeah, absolutely. When it’s, we were talking back then, and this was said by Foreign Minister Lavrov at meeting that the U.S. and the Zionist entity are constantly prolonging this conflict by continuing to pump weapons towards the Zionist entity, just like the U.S. is prolonging the conflict in Ukraine by continuing to supply them with weapons as well and blocking any chance at a resolution there. So, of course, I’d imagine the talks between Syria and Russia definitely would involve a conversation on air defenses, which Syria has been weak in being able to protect itself for years, as Israel has constantly struck at Syria, struck at what it considers Hezbollah targets in Syria, striking at supply routes, which also have included not only weapons, but also just Iranian food supplies and aids that have gotten, that have traveled through Syria and were going to Lebanon and to Syria in the past few years. So that’s definitely an important agenda item that I imagine were discussed, but there wasn’t–

PressTV: 9:32
Julia, I don’t mean to cut you off. We only have about–

Kassem:
–points that were that were released yet in terms of like the entirety of what they were talking about. But that’s exactly what what we can speculate. But given the timing that this conversation took place, of course, with Netanyahu’s visit to U.S. Congress and the–

PressTV: 9:57
Mr. Gilbert-Doctorow, I mean, and you refer to Putin sitting down with possibly the Turkish leader and Assad. How would that look? We don’t have much time left. You know, we kind of got into our news review quite late, so I want to apologize to both of you. And I have to cut you off, Julia.

But, Mr. Gilbert-Doctorow, in less than a minute and 20 seconds, sir, what are the dynamics of that, when you have two heavily sanctioned men sitting down with a NATO member and a possible enhancing of ties between the three of them. How would the dynamics of that look, and how would that impact the region and their friends and foes?

Doctorow: 10:36
Mr. Erdogan is sitting on two stools. And this is something that will have to be resolved in the near future if he wants to join the eurasian club that the Russians and the Chinese have set up in two organizations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS. In this case, I would say that Mr. Erdogan is tilting towards the east and is likely to cut some of his ties in the west. But that is something we’ll have to watch closely. Nonetheless, it’s understandable that he wants to re-establish relations with Syria if the neighborhood, the Arab League, is also considering warming relations with Syria, then Turkey should not be far behind. So this makes a lot of sense.

PressTV: 11:26
All right. Thank you both for joining us. Time has gotten the better of us, and I want to thank you both for your patience and being with us. Julia Kassem there, journalist and political analyst joining us from Moscow; and Gilbert Doctorow, independent international affairs analyst, joining us from Brussels. And viewers, this brings us to the conclusion of this segment of your PressTV News Review program. Thanks for tuning in and goodbye for now.

This website is dedicated to analysis of international affairs with a concentration on Russia, the subject of my special expertise. It is not my aim to get involved in partisan politics in the United States, or in Europe for that matter, except as may be necessary to find solutions to the crisis in relations with Russia that, on its present course, is leading us to mutual annihilation in the very near future. This has led me, somewhat reluctantly, to use this platform to promote the candidacy for the presidency of Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance.

Yes, Genocide Joe has just announced his withdrawal from the presidential race. But his designated successor, Kamela Harris, who is likely to be approved as their candidate by the upcoming Democratic National Convention in August, will merely be a continuation of the policies leading us to destruction, since she is as incompetent as Joe, though for different reasons, and will be as malleable a tool of the Neocon-driven Deep State as he has been. Her position in government was determined strictly by the box ticking of the kingmakers in the Democratic Party organization.  Black? Check. Southeast Asian? Check.  Woman? Check.  Her merits begin and end there as anyone who has listened to her public speaking would understand instantly.

Nonetheless, with enough funding and party organization mobilized behind her, Kamela Harris is said to have even chances of being elected in a race against Donald Trump. This means that every obstacle on the way to Trump’s victory must be removed wherever possible.  One such obstacle is the continuing candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who will drain votes away from both the Democratic and Republican parties in proportions that are today unforeseeable.

For the reasons I set out in the first sentence above, I have not used this platform to promote RFK’s candidacy, though I made some small contributions to his fund-raising appeals over the past couple of months and offered my services to him as a volunteer. To those who will object, saying that RFK has carried into his campaign some political baggage which they cannot abide, especially his contested views on vaccinations and COVID, I say again that you have to choose your battles carefully and that no single candidate or even all of them put together will ever meet with your full endorsement.

I now call for RFK to do the honorable thing for the sake of the country and withdraw from the race, preferably at the same time urging his followers to cast their ballots for Trump.  It would be very nice if that were done within the scope of an agreement with Donald that assured RFK an appropriate and powerful position in the Trump administration. I humbly submit that such an appointment could be as replacement for John Kerry as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate or Secretary of the Interior. Unlike our host of environmentalists, RFK actually achieved something of great importance by his efforts to clean up the Hudson River over the course of a couple of decades by pursuing lawsuits and political pressure against the most egregious polluters. He deserves our full respect and empowerment to continue this work in a Trump administration.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Zeit für Robert F. Kennedy, aus dem Rennen auszusteigen

Diese Website ist der Analyse internationaler Angelegenheiten gewidmet, wobei ich mich auf Russland konzentriere, das Thema, auf das ich mich besonders spezialisiert habe. Es ist nicht mein Ziel, mich in die Parteipolitik in den Vereinigten Staaten oder in Europa einzumischen, es sei denn, dies ist notwendig, um Lösungen für die Krise in den Beziehungen zu Russland zu finden, die uns mit dem derzeitigen Kurs in sehr naher Zukunft in die gegenseitige Vernichtung führt. Dies hat mich dazu veranlasst, etwas widerwillig, diese Plattform zu nutzen, um die Präsidentschaftskandidatur von Donald J. Trump und J.D. Vance zu fördern.

Ja, Genocide Joe hat gerade seinen Rückzug aus dem Präsidentschaftsrennen bekannt gegeben. Aber seine designierte Nachfolgerin, Kamela Harris, die wahrscheinlich auf dem bevorstehenden Parteitag der Demokraten im August als deren Kandidatin bestätigt wird, wird lediglich die Politik fortsetzen, die uns in den Untergang führt, denn sie ist genauso inkompetent wie Joe, wenn auch aus anderen Gründen, und sie wird ein ebenso formbares Werkzeug des von den Neocons gesteuerten Tiefen Staates sein wie er es war. Ihre Position in der Regierung wurde ausschließlich durch das Ankreuzen der Königsmacher in der Organisation der Demokratischen Partei bestimmt. Schwarz? Abgehakt. Südostasiatisch? Abgehakt. Weiblich? Richtig. Ihre Vorzüge beginnen und enden dort, wie jeder, der ihren öffentlichen Reden zugehört hat, sofort verstehen wird.

Dennoch wird Kamela Harris bei ausreichender Finanzierung und Mobilisierung der Parteiorganisation hinter ihr sogar eine Chance eingeräumt, in einem Rennen gegen Donald Trump gewählt zu werden. Das bedeutet, dass jedes Hindernis auf dem Weg zu Trumps Sieg beseitigt werden muss, wo immer es möglich ist. Ein solches Hindernis ist die fortdauernde Kandidatur von Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., die sowohl der demokratischen als auch der republikanischen Partei Stimmen in einem heute noch nicht absehbaren Ausmaß abziehen wird.

Aus den Gründen, die ich im ersten Satz oben dargelegt habe, habe ich diese Plattform nicht genutzt, um RFKs Kandidatur zu fördern, obwohl ich in den letzten Monaten einige kleine Beiträge zu seinen Spendenaufrufen geleistet und ihm meine Dienste als Freiwilliger angeboten habe. Denjenigen, die einwenden werden, dass RFK in seinen Wahlkampf politisches Gepäck hineingetragen hat, das sie nicht ertragen können, insbesondere seine umstrittenen Ansichten über Impfungen und COVID, sage ich noch einmal, dass man sich seine Kämpfe sorgfältig aussuchen muss und dass kein einzelner Kandidat oder gar alle zusammen jemals Ihre volle Unterstützung finden werden.

Ich fordere RFK nun auf, dem Land zuliebe das Ehrenhafte zu tun und sich aus dem Rennen zurückzuziehen, und am besten gleichzeitig seine Anhänger aufzufordern, ihre Stimme für Trump abzugeben. Es wäre sehr schön, wenn dies im Rahmen einer Vereinbarung mit Donald geschehen würde, die RFK einen angemessenen und einflussreichen Posten in der Trump-Administration zusichert. Ich behaupte in aller Bescheidenheit, dass eine solche Ernennung ein Ersatz für John Kerry als Sonderbeauftragter des Präsidenten für das Klima oder als Innenminister sein könnte. Im Gegensatz zu vielen anderen Umweltschützern hat RFK mit seinen Bemühungen um die Sanierung des Hudson River über mehrere Jahrzehnte hinweg durch Klagen und politischen Druck gegen die schlimmsten Umweltverschmutzer tatsächlich etwas sehr Wichtiges erreicht. Er verdient unseren vollen Respekt und die Ermächtigung, diese Arbeit in einer Trump-Regierung fortzusetzen.

For those among you who still believe that my high expectations of a Donald Trump 2.0 administration in the domain of foreign relations are misplaced, I offer some considerations based on the ‘warts and all’ presentation of Trump’s thinking and belly-led inclinations coming from his former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell. See

www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2lOC6CLh3I

Sadly this two day old English language video has received only 22,000 views [the German language version has received 10 times that number[.  It merits vastly more attention from an American audience. What you get here is the underlying logic of what the mainstream media falsely denounce as the ‘isolationism’ of MAGA.  In fact the isolationism is nothing more than drawing back from the overextended position as global policeman that the country cannot afford financially.

 This video provides a wealth of clues as to how Trump’s promise to snuff out the wars that Biden lit can be achieved quickly. Most importantly it allows us to see beyond the bravado of transactional foreign policy based on overwhelming U.S. strength and bullying. What we see instead is the fundamental weakness of the U.S. position that necessitates the turn away from military solutions in favor of diplomacy and, second, the realization that the United States has no fundamental interests at stake in how the diplomatic solution is structured other than to see that both sides make compromises that ensure the deal will stick and be properly enforced by global powers in a way that Minsk-2 was not.

Throughout the interview, Grenell takes as his point of reference the unsupportable 37 trillion dollar national debt, which must be cut back, not added to in the years of a future Trump administration. This can only be realized by ending the wars that Washington is fueling NOW.

I put this explanation of why the United States under Trump will cut all further assistance to Ukraine together with the explanation we heard from Senator J.D. Vance, now Trump’s running mate, in his speech on the Senate floor just before the fateful vote on an additional 60 billion dollars appropriation to Kiev: that in the ongoing war of attrition the United States simply does not have the manufacturing capacity to send to Ukraine the 155 mm artillery shells and other munitions and weapons systems that it needs to defend itself against the greatly superior Russian armed forces, which are backed up by the world’s biggest production of these necessities of war.

                                                                  *****

Given the realism underlying these guiding principles of the future Trump foreign policy which will operate on the old truth that politics is the art of the possible, given the longstanding foundation of Russian foreign policy in the very same tradition of the Realist school that puts national interest foremost, what may we expect to find in the peace settlement that Trump may broker as from the days immediately following his election on 5 November?

I hazard the guess that notwithstanding the claims that Trump may make that he has forced concessions on both sides to reach a peace, that peace will be largely based on the latest proposal by Vladimir Putin on the day before the phony Summit on Peace held in Switzerland in June.

To be sure, the Russians will give up their territorial claims to the entirety of the 4 provinces they have already incorporated into the Russian Federation but never fully conquered. It may even be that they will keep only two of these, Donetsk and Lugansk, while Kherson and Zaporozhie are returned to Ukraine under conditions that guaranty substantial autonomy to them, in the sense of the Minsk-2 accords that were never implemented for lack of active intervention by the West European guarantors of the accords.  After all, Russia’s national interest was never territorial aggrandizement but its security from NATO encroachment.

Why the distinction between the 4 provinces? Firstly, because Lugansk and Donetsk constitute the most heavily Russophone part of Ukraine and suffered the greatest losses of people killed and property destroyed from the 8 years of shelling and ‘anti-terror’ marauding by Ukrainian military units as from 2014 to the start of the Special Military Operation in 2022. They are also the most valuable territory for their metallurgical and general manufacturing traditions. And they are essential to ensure the viability of Russia’s hold on Crimea. Letting go Kherson and Zaporozhie would return to Ukraine valuable Black Earth land which is essential to ensure the economic viability of the rump state.

At the same time, surely the Russians will set as a non-negotiable demand the formal refusal of Ukraine to ever seek NATO membership, a prohibition on the placement of foreign military infrastructure or personnel on Ukrainian territory and limits on the size and capabilities of the Ukrainian armed forces.

It is virtually certain that Russia will raise no objections to Ukraine joining the European Union. And it is conceivable that Russia will contribute to the rebuilding of Ukraine by ceding part or all of the 350 billion dollars in frozen Russian state assets now in the West as an act of good will, not as war reparations. Russia can well afford to do this because it recouped a large part of this amount in the first year of the war from the vastly inflated prices of the hydrocarbons it sold on world markets as a result of global disruptions in energy supplies.  In return, Russia will surely demand, and likely the West will agree to rescind all economic sanctions that have been imposed on the country.

I believe that a package closely resembling what I have outlined above can be sold to the American public, especially if there is provision of massive funding for the reconstruction of Ukraine using the frozen funds with Russian consent and thereby avoiding the risks of overturning the global financial system inherent in the presently discussed outright confiscation of Russian state assets.  Moreover, the exchange of land for money is a widely accepted solution that even the much abused Ukrainian citizenry might well accept, were they to be asked in a plebiscite.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Wie ein von Trump vermittelter Friedensvertrag für die Ukraine aussehen könnte

Für diejenigen unter Ihnen, die immer noch glauben, dass meine hohen Erwartungen an eine Donald Trump 2.0-Administration im Bereich der Außenbeziehungen unangebracht sind, biete ich einige Überlegungen an, die auf der „Warzen und alles“-Darstellung von Trumps Denken und seinen Neigungen aus dem Bauch heraus basieren, die von seinem ehemaligen Botschafter in Deutschland, Richard Grenell, stammt. Siehe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13grmfiMWls (mit deutscher – teilweise fehlerhafter – KI-Simultanübersetzung)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2lOC6CLh3I (englische Originalversion)

Leider hat dieses zwei Tage alte englischsprachige Video nur 22.000 Aufrufe erhalten [die deutschsprachige Version hat die 10-fache Anzahl erhalten.] Es verdient weitaus mehr Aufmerksamkeit von einem amerikanischen Publikum. Was Sie hier sehen, ist die zugrundeliegende Logik dessen, was die Mainstream-Medien fälschlicherweise als den „Isolationismus“ von MAGA anprangern. In Wirklichkeit ist der Isolationismus nichts anderes als der Rückzug aus der überzogenen Position als Weltpolizist, die sich das Land finanziell nicht leisten kann.

Dieses Video liefert eine Fülle von Hinweisen darauf, wie Trumps Versprechen, die von Biden angezündeten Kriege zu beenden, schnell umgesetzt werden kann. Vor allem erlaubt es uns, über die Angeberei einer transaktionalen Außenpolitik, die auf überwältigender US-Stärke und Tyrannei beruht, hinwegzusehen. Was wir stattdessen sehen, ist die grundlegende Schwäche der US-Position, die die Abkehr von militärischen Lösungen zugunsten der Diplomatie erforderlich macht, und zweitens die Erkenntnis, dass die Vereinigten Staaten keine grundlegenden Interessen daran haben, wie die diplomatische Lösung strukturiert ist, außer zu sehen, dass beide Seiten Kompromisse eingehen, die sicherstellen, dass die Vereinbarung Bestand hat und von den Weltmächten ordnungsgemäß durchgesetzt wird, wie es bei Minsk-2 nicht der Fall war.

Während des gesamten Interviews bezieht sich Grenell auf die untragbaren 37 Billionen Dollar Staatsschulden, die in den Jahren einer künftigen Trump-Regierung abgebaut und nicht weiter erhöht werden dürfen. Dies kann nur durch die Beendigung der Kriege erreicht werden, die Washington JETZT anheizt.

Ich ergänze die Erklärung, warum die Vereinigten Staaten unter Trump jede weitere Hilfe für die Ukraine einstellen werden, mit der Erklärung von Senator J.D. Vance, jetzt Trumps Kandidat für die Vize-Präsidentschaft, in seiner Rede im Senat kurz vor der verhängnisvollen Abstimmung über zusätzliche 60 Milliarden Dollar für Kiew: dass die Vereinigten Staaten im laufenden Zermürbungskrieg einfach nicht über die Produktionskapazität verfügen, um der Ukraine die 155-mm-Artilleriegeschosse und andere Munition und Waffensysteme zu schicken, die sie braucht, um sich gegen die weit überlegenen russischen Streitkräfte zu verteidigen, die von der weltweit größten Produktion dieser kriegswichtigen Güter unterstützt werden.

                                                                  *****

Angesichts des Realismus, der diesen Leitprinzipien der künftigen Trump’schen Außenpolitik zugrunde liegt, die sich auf die alte Wahrheit stützen wird, dass Politik die Kunst des Möglichen ist, und angesichts der Tatsache, dass die russische Außenpolitik seit langem in der gleichen Tradition der realistischen Schule steht, die das nationale Interesse in den Vordergrund stellt, was können wir dann von der Friedensregelung erwarten, die Trump in den Tagen unmittelbar nach seiner Wahl am 5. November aushandeln könnte?

Ich wage die Vermutung, dass ungeachtet der Behauptungen, die Trump aufstellen mag, er habe beide Seiten zu Zugeständnissen gezwungen, um einen Frieden zu erreichen, dieser Frieden weitgehend auf dem jüngsten Vorschlag von Wladimir Putin vom Vortag des windigen Friedensgipfels in der Schweiz im Juni beruhen wird.

Sicherlich werden die Russen ihre territorialen Ansprüche auf die Gesamtheit der vier Provinzen aufgeben, die sie bereits in die Russische Föderation eingegliedert, aber nie vollständig erobert haben. Es könnte sogar sein, dass sie nur zwei davon, nämlich Donezk und Lugansk, behalten werden, während Cherson und Saporoshje an die Ukraine zurückgegeben werden, und zwar unter Bedingungen, die ihnen eine weitgehende Autonomie im Sinne der Minsk-2-Abkommen garantieren, die wegen fehlender aktiver Intervention der westeuropäischen Garanten der Abkommen nie umgesetzt wurden. Schließlich lag das nationale Interesse Russlands nie in der territorialen Vergrößerung, sondern in seiner Sicherheit vor Übergriffen der NATO.

Warum die Unterscheidung zwischen den 4 Provinzen? Erstens, weil Lugansk und Donezk den am stärksten russischsprachigen Teil der Ukraine bilden und die größten Verluste an getöteten Menschen und zerstörtem Eigentum durch den achtjährigen Beschuss und das „Anti-Terror“-Marodieren der ukrainischen Militäreinheiten von 2014 bis zum Beginn der militärischen Sonderoperation im Jahr 2022 erlitten haben. Sie sind auch das wertvollste Gebiet für ihre metallurgischen und allgemeinen Produktionstraditionen. Und sie sind von entscheidender Bedeutung, um die Lebensfähigkeit der Krim für Russland zu sichern. Mit der Aufgabe von Cherson und Saporoshje würde die Ukraine wertvolles Schwarzerde-Land zurückerhalten, das für die wirtschaftliche Lebensfähigkeit des Rumpfstaates unerlässlich ist.

Gleichzeitig werden die Russen sicherlich die formale Weigerung der Ukraine, jemals eine NATO-Mitgliedschaft anzustreben, ein Verbot der Stationierung ausländischer militärischer Infrastruktur oder ausländischen Personals auf ukrainischem Hoheitsgebiet und eine Begrenzung der Größe und der Fähigkeiten der ukrainischen Streitkräfte als nicht verhandelbare Forderung aufstellen.

Es ist praktisch sicher, dass Russland keine Einwände gegen einen Beitritt der Ukraine zur Europäischen Union erheben wird. Und es ist denkbar, dass Russland zum Wiederaufbau der Ukraine beiträgt, indem es einen Teil oder das gesamte eingefrorene russische Staatsvermögen in Höhe von 350 Milliarden Dollar, das sich derzeit im Westen befindet, als Akt des guten Willens und nicht als Kriegsreparationen abtritt. Russland kann sich dies durchaus leisten, da es einen großen Teil dieses Betrags im ersten Kriegsjahr durch die stark überhöhten Preise für die Kohlenwasserstoffe, die es infolge der weltweiten Unterbrechungen der Energieversorgung auf den Weltmärkten verkauft hat, wieder hereingeholt hat. Im Gegenzug wird Russland sicherlich die Aufhebung aller gegen das Land verhängten Wirtschaftssanktionen fordern, und wahrscheinlich wird der Westen zustimmen.

Ich glaube, dass der amerikanischen Öffentlichkeit ein Paket verkauft werden kann, das dem von mir oben skizzierten sehr ähnlich ist, vor allem dann, wenn massive Mittel für den Wiederaufbau der Ukraine zur Verfügung gestellt werden, wobei die eingefrorenen Gelder mit russischer Zustimmung verwendet werden und so die Risiken eines Umsturzes des globalen Finanzsystems vermieden werden, die mit der derzeit diskutierten völligen Beschlagnahme des russischen Staatsvermögens verbunden sind. Darüber hinaus ist der Tausch von Land gegen Geld eine weithin akzeptierte Lösung, die selbst die viel gescholtenen ukrainischen Bürger durchaus akzeptieren würden, wenn sie in einer Volksabstimmung gefragt würden.

My latest interview with Nima Alkhorshid on ‘Dialogue Works’ has generated many negative comments which I enjoyed reading because their words vindicated what I have been saying for a good long time: that the Opposition to mainstream news purveyors and to the Washington narrative of the Biden administration has within it too many America-haters, most of them living in the United States, who cannot abide the idea that anything good could happen in their homeland or that, in fact, they enjoy far greater freedom of speech than I do, living in Europe, or than their northern cousins in Canada enjoy living under the authoritarian regime of Justin Trudeau.

Let me wipe away the snide remarks of those who accused me of naiveté, of falling prey to lying politicians which they believe Donald Trump and JD Vance to be.  My friends, I firmly believe the old truism that America will always do the right thing….after it has tried everything else. In the speech of J.D. Vance which I praised so highly, I saw that the long awaited moment has come.

The issues surrounding the Trump candidacy are the same as back in 2016: can we focus our minds on what immediately threatens our lives and put to a side our possible disagreement with policies advocated by the candidate that do not meet our personal preferences but are not life threatening NOW, not in 30 years time, like global warming, or women’s right to control their bodies (abortion).

I say out loud that the number one threat to America’s and the world’s continued existence beyond the immediate months before us is the war in Ukraine which can blow up into a nuclear WWIII at any moment if the current U.S. policy of seeking regime change in Russia and the break-up of the Russian Federation through inflicting a humiliating military defeat on the country appears to be materializing.

Gaza is a very nasty case, an openly perpetrated genocide that needs to be stopped. The American animus towards Iran, North Korea and China are all land mines which may explode but are unlikely to explode if the first and existential threat in Ukraine is resolved shortly. This resolution at the negotiating table is what I see happening if Trump wins in November.  And as I said in the interview, given the way that people and their leaders flock to the winning side, a Trump victory in November can also reverse the power balance here in Europe and drain away the power from the newly installed European Commission under Ursula von der Leyen, redirecting power to Viktor Orban and his fellow thinkers who want to restore sovereignty to the member states and whittle away at the authoritarian neo-Cons presently in control of Europe’s supranational government structures sitting in Brussels. Yes, Europe has its own home-grown neo-Cons and is not merely marching under instructions from Washington. Let us call them by their proper name – modern day Quislings, or for those whose memory does not go so far back as WWII, the Fifth Column.

Comments on my latest interview cite, with deprecation, what they call my optimism, which they believe to be misplaced. They are not listening closely: I explained in the interview why my hopes for Trump in 2016 were dashed because of his lack of proper supports within the political establishment to put together a team capable of implementing rather than frustrating his policies.. And I am convinced that he has now mastered Washington while the Democrats are presently stumbling, so that he will be able to deliver on his promises today whereas he could not in 2016.  In any case, I am unapologetic about being an optimist. I spent 25 years in corporate business in the marketing departments, where optimism comes with the territory and where fools do not last long.

                                                                        *****

Donald Trump is presented by his political detractors in the mainstream media as a braggart and liar. During his presidency, The Washington Post issued daily lists of the factual errors of his Tweets and public statements over the preceding 24 hours.  CNN has done a “fact check” of his every word these past several days.

However unattractive boastfulness may be, outright lies fall into a different category when they are made by people in power or by those who would be in power.

The fact is that the U.S. Government lies to the people every day about the way the war in Ukraine is going, about the intentions of the Israeli government to protect civilians and about all types of issues that are very important and which are evolving under the control of Washington. These are factual errors and propaganda that could be better called ‘disinformation’ to use the lexicon of the day.

I do not wish to imply that I expect absolute transparency and truthfulness from any government. However, there are often mitigating circumstances which favor lying. I believe that Trump and Vance are using falsehoods as tactical weapons in their fight with retrograde members of their own party, not to mention the Democrats, whom they cannot fight openly. As I say in the interview, the notion that we should turn the Ukraine war over to Europe so that the USA can concentrate its forces to wage war on China is just such an example of deception for a worthy purpose. Turning support for Ukraine over to the Europeans means throwing Ukraine under the bus, as we say in modern American English. Everyone knows that without the U.S. component, Europe’s possible military aid to Ukraine is worthless. And as for China, this is just a red flag to entice the war-mongers in both parties to believe that Trump is their boy, when in fact he is not.

I look forward to continuing this discussion with any and all. I remain ‘optimistic’ that there is light at the end of the tunnel of never ending U.S-incited wars around the globe.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Lügner, Kriegstreiber und die Politik an der Spitze der Macht

Mein jüngstes Interview mit Nima Alkhorshid auf ‘Dialogue Works’ hat viele negative Kommentare hervorgerufen, die ich mit Freude gelesen habe, weil sie das bestätigen, was ich schon seit langem sage: dass es in der Opposition zu den Mainstream-Nachrichtensendern und zum Washingtoner Narrativ der Biden-Administration zu viele Amerika-Hasser gibt, von denen die meisten in den Vereinigten Staaten leben und die den Gedanken nicht ertragen können, dass in ihrem Heimatland etwas Gutes geschehen könnte oder dass sie in Wirklichkeit eine weitaus größere Redefreiheit genießen als ich, der ich in Europa lebe, oder als ihre nördlichen Cousins in Kanada, die unter dem autoritären Regime von Justin Trudeau leben.

Lassen Sie mich die abfälligen Bemerkungen derjenigen wegwischen, die mich der Naivität beschuldigten, den verlogenen Politikern auf den Leim zu gehen, für die sie Donald Trump und JD Vance halten. Meine Freunde, ich glaube fest an die alte Binsenweisheit, dass Amerika immer das Richtige tun wird… nachdem es alles andere versucht hat. In der Rede von J.D. Vance, die ich so hoch gelobt habe, habe ich gesehen, dass der lang erwartete Moment gekommen ist.

Die Fragen im Zusammenhang mit der Kandidatur von Trump sind dieselben wie 2016: Können wir uns auf das konzentrieren, was unser Leben unmittelbar bedroht, und unsere mögliche Ablehnung von politischen Maßnahmen, die der Kandidat vertritt und die nicht unseren persönlichen Präferenzen entsprechen, aber nicht JETZT und nicht in 30 Jahren lebensbedrohlich sind, wie die globale Erwärmung oder das Recht der Frauen, über ihren Körper zu bestimmen (Abtreibung), beiseite schieben?

Ich sage laut, dass die größte Bedrohung für den Fortbestand Amerikas und der Welt über die nächsten Monate hinaus der Krieg in der Ukraine ist, der sich jederzeit zu einem nuklearen Dritten Weltkrieg ausweiten kann, wenn die derzeitige US-Politik, die einen Regimewechsel in Russland und die Auflösung der Russischen Föderation anstrebt, indem sie dem Land eine demütigende militärische Niederlage zufügen will, umgesetzt wird.

Gaza ist ein sehr unangenehmer Fall, ein offen verübter Völkermord, der gestoppt werden muss. Die amerikanischen Animositäten gegenüber dem Iran, Nordkorea und China sind allesamt Landminen, die explodieren können, aber wahrscheinlich nicht explodieren werden, wenn die erste und existenzielle Bedrohung in der Ukraine in Kürze gelöst wird. Diese Lösung am Verhandlungstisch ist das, was ich sehe, wenn Trump im November gewinnt. Und wie ich in dem Interview sagte, kann ein Sieg von Trump im November auch das Machtgleichgewicht hier in Europa umkehren und der neu installierten Europäischen Kommission unter Ursula von der Leyen die Macht entziehen und sie an Viktor Orban und seine Mitdenker zurückgeben, die die Souveränität der Mitgliedstaaten wiederherstellen und die autoritären Neokonservativen, die derzeit die supranationalen Regierungsstrukturen Europas in Brüssel kontrollieren, zurückdrängen wollen. Ja, Europa hat seine eigenen einheimischen Neocons und marschiert nicht nur auf Anweisung aus Washington. Nennen wir sie bei ihrem richtigen Namen – moderne Quislinge oder für diejenigen, deren Gedächtnis nicht so weit zurückreicht wie der Zweite Weltkrieg, die Fünfte Kolonne.

In den Kommentaren zu meinem letzten Interview wird abwertend auf meinen Optimismus verwiesen, den sie für unangebracht halten. Sie hören nicht genau zu: Ich habe in dem Interview erklärt, warum meine Hoffnungen auf Trump im Jahr 2016 enttäuscht wurden, weil es ihm an der richtigen Unterstützung innerhalb des politischen Establishments fehlte, um ein Team zusammenzustellen, das in der Lage ist, seine Politik umzusetzen, anstatt sie zu vereiteln… Und ich bin davon überzeugt, dass er Washington jetzt beherrscht, während die Demokraten derzeit straucheln, so dass er heute in der Lage sein wird, seine Versprechen einzulösen, während er das 2016 nicht konnte. Auf jeden Fall bin ich unumwunden ein Optimist. Ich habe 25 Jahre in der Wirtschaft in den Marketingabteilungen verbracht, wo Optimismus zum Alltag gehört und wo Dummköpfe nicht lange überleben.

                                                                        *****

Donald Trump wird von seinen politischen Gegnern in den Mainstream-Medien als Angeber und Lügner dargestellt. Während seiner Präsidentschaft veröffentlichte die Washington Post täglich Listen mit den sachlichen Fehlern seiner Tweets und öffentlichen Erklärungen der vorangegangenen 24 Stunden. CNN hat in den letzten Tagen jedes seiner Worte einem „Faktencheck“ unterzogen.

So unattraktiv Prahlerei auch sein mag, offene Lügen fallen in eine andere Kategorie, wenn sie von Leuten gemacht werden, die an der Macht sind oder die an der Macht sein wollen.

Tatsache ist, dass die US-Regierung die Menschen jeden Tag über den Verlauf des Krieges in der Ukraine, über die Absichten der israelischen Regierung, die Zivilbevölkerung zu schützen, und über alle möglichen Themen, die sehr wichtig sind und die sich unter der Kontrolle Washingtons entwickeln, belügt. Es handelt sich dabei um sachliche Fehler und Propaganda, die man besser als „Desinformation“ bezeichnen könnte, um den heutigen Sprachgebrauch zu verwenden.

Ich möchte damit nicht sagen, dass ich von jeder Regierung absolute Transparenz und Wahrhaftigkeit erwarte. Allerdings gibt es oft mildernde Umstände, die das Lügen begünstigen. Ich glaube, dass Trump und Vance Unwahrheiten als taktische Waffen in ihrem Kampf mit rückschrittlichen Mitgliedern ihrer eigenen Partei einsetzen, ganz zu schweigen von den Demokraten, die sie nicht offen bekämpfen können. Wie ich in dem Interview sage, ist die Vorstellung, dass wir den Krieg in der Ukraine Europa überlassen sollten, damit die USA ihre Kräfte konzentrieren können, um einen Krieg gegen China zu führen, genau so ein Beispiel für eine Täuschung zu einem lohnenden Zweck. Die Unterstützung für die Ukraine den Europäern zu überlassen, bedeutet, die Ukraine vor den Bus zu werfen, wie wir im modernen amerikanischen Englisch sagen. Jeder weiß, dass die mögliche Militärhilfe Europas für die Ukraine ohne die US-Komponente wertlos ist. Und was China betrifft, so ist dies nur eine rote Fahne, um die Kriegstreiber in beiden Parteien in dem Glauben zu lassen, dass Trump auf ihrer Seite ist, obwohl er das in Wirklichkeit nicht ist.

Ich freue mich darauf, diese Diskussion mit allen fortzusetzen. Ich bleibe „optimistisch“, dass es Licht am Ende des Tunnels der nicht enden wollenden, von den USA angezettelten Kriege rund um den Globus gibt.

’

An hour long interview may be challenging for you, the viewer, but it is still more challenging for the interviewee. It moves across the waterfront from the more obvious salient issues of the day for which you have concise answers formulated in advance, whether or not a list of questions was provided in by the host, and moves into unforeseeable areas about which you respond extemporaneously.  So it was with this interview taken by Nima Alkhorshid.

https://youtu.be/m1UGx5Ay6J0

I was delighted that from the very start I was asked about the significance of Trump’s naming J.D. Vance to be his running mate. My own spontaneous look into Vance’s record ahead of this show turned up a speech he made in the U.S. Senate in the debate ahead of the vote on the bill providing $60 billion in further aid to Ukraine. This speech put flesh on the scarecrow Vance presented in major media, where attention is paid only to his ‘nyet,’ which puts him in the enemy camp, and no mention is made of the reasoning he applied to the issue, which, in my view demonstrates superior intelligence, independence of thinking and an appreciation of how history is used and mostly abused by his colleagues on Capitol Hill to serve their war-mongering.

He attacked the logic of the defenders of our Ukraine policy who oppose peace negotiations, saying this is just appeasement akin to Chamberlain in the lead-up to WWII.   But the film of WWII has been played and replayed endlessly in the Senate and this supposed lesson from history does not fit.  Putin is not Hitler, he does not have the power of Hitler.  No, there are far more apt likenesses in the past.   Look better at WWI in which the major powers stumbled into a horrific catastrophe because they overlooked diplomacy.   But then look also at the lessons of the Iraq war. Then as now those who were opposed to the attack on Iraq were subjected to abuse by the pro-war majority, just as today those who oppose the Ukraine war narrative are derided as stooges of Putin. There was no free discussion and this is what we need most to arrive at good policies.

Vance then points out the very same politicians who led us into the war in Iraq on false pretenses of defending democracy are doing that today in calling to arm Ukraine

And war, says Vance, has unintended consequences.  That is how America, the biggest Christain countryon earth, by its interventions in Syria wiped out one of the oldest Christian communities in the world dating from the time of the Apostles, 1.5 million strong at the start of hostilities and nil today.     This is how the same is playing out in Ukraine where the government is striking hard against the Christian community that it says is aligned with Moscow. The result is an assault on freedom of religion.

I highly recommend this speech to my readers:  Live: Republican VP Candidate JD Vance Called for Reevaluation of US Foreign Aid During House Debate (youtube.com)

In my interview, I explained at length something else I have been ruminating over these past several day, namely how the appointment of Vance and the speeches delivered in the Republican National Convention by several powerful representatives of civil society, most particularly the president of the Teamsters union, show that Donald Trump now appears to have the support he needs to do what he was unable to do in his first term: to attract a high quality team to his cabinet and to other high federal positions consisting of people who are dedicated to implementing  his policies.. It is likely that he will gain control of both houses of Congress so that the Senate approval of his nominees may be foreseen. Moreover, this time around, a divided Democratic party, such as we now see before us, will be unable to frustrate Trump’s plans, foreign as well as domestic.

I was less successful in this interview setting out my thinking on how the new catchword of the day in international relations, ‘sovereignty,’ relates to the bigger and very traditional dialectic between Realism and Idealism in international relations, with the former standing for the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) based vision of nation states that protect the interests of their citizens in general and most specifically against interference by foreign powers that so often causes civil unrest and wars. The latter, Idealism, as we know, focuses on values and finds its latest expression in globalism, which is promoted by supranational, unelected institutions that suck power away from nation states, and in non-state actors such as multinational corporations.  All of this I will come back to in writing another day, because it is of decisive importance to understand who is really who on the world stage today and why today’s catchy and novel jargon is often just a rebranding of distinctions that go back centuries.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Transcription below by a reader

Nima R. Alkhorshid: 00:04
Let’s start with Trump. He has chosen to have Senator Vance as his vice president. What does it mean when it comes to the foreign policy of the United States?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Well, I can tell you that my view of Trump’s candidacy has changed 180 degrees. I won’t say like Annalena 360 degrees. It’s changed 180 degrees since this weekend. Of course, it was a dramatic event, this near miss, which almost left him dead. But the– and it’s happily something that I had predicted long ago would be the main factor bringing this war in Europe to an end. I said it would be a result of divine intervention. I think we witnessed divine intervention this past Saturday. Friends, other analysts who say that they are not believers, I think they got religion over the weekend.

01:17
But that’s not really what changed my mind about whom I would back in this in the November elections and why. It was precisely what you just mentioned, his decision on who his vice president will be, that changed my mind at once. I had not been following the career of J.D. Vance, but I did a little bit of brushing up to see why my first instinct was to be elated that this man was chosen. My first instinct was as a result of reading what mainstream had to say, the New York Times or the Financial Times, who spoke about him and made mention of his stand on the Ukraine war. Of course, they did it in the most negative way possible.

I put aside the editorial opinion that they were applying, and I looked at the facts. And then just a few minutes before we come on air, I was listening to J.D. Vance’s speech. Well, first I listened to his speech at the convention last night, and that wouldn’t be much of a reason to change your views on anything, because it was very much baby-kissing type of American politics and my wife comes on and my kids and how I deal with my four-year-old and where I come from and what kind of a hillbilly I am and so forth.

02:52
All of that is very nice, traditional American politics, which they all engage in, whatever other views they have on the world, and whether they call themselves Democrats or Republicans. However, when I dug a little bit further back and looked at his speech, and I was just been following his speech in the Senate, just prior to the vote on the aid to Ukraine, that 60-billion-dollar appropriation, I was utterly amazed. I was left speechless. Frankly, his speech was more cogent, was more patriotic in a way that will appeal to all American voters, but not cheap patriotism. You can see very deep patriotism, aware of the interests of the people who put him into office, and also with a moral, very distinct moral overlay, coming out of his Christian background.

03:51
This was unexpected. The kind of Christian overlay in American politics often can be difficult to take, because we have so many extremists, various sects, who would be quite happy to see the end of the world come because the Messiah will follow. These crackpots give religion a bad name. The religion that I saw in J.D. Vance was quite different. It was very traditional and very easy to appreciate in a positive way when he’s speaking about the loss of innocence in this war, about the unintended consequences of war. In his case, and I say religion came up, when he mentioned the loss of the Christian communities in Iraq, an unintended consequence of the war in Iraq, which sent 1.5 million Iraqi Christians from the, as he described correctly, from the community that goes back to the apostles. And they were sent fleeing for their lives because of what America did, the havoc that it created by overturning the existing regime and replacing it with chaos and ultimately with a move of the whole country into the arms of Iran.

05:22
This discussion was one example of what I did not expect in this man, but the whole speech from start to finish demonstrated, as I said, a very collected mind with a firm understanding of how history can be used and not abused, with a firm understanding and blending, what I would call academic intelligence with life experience intelligence, as a man who signed up for the Marines shortly after the start of the Iraq war, in the mistaken belief that this was a just war, and that America was coming in to do something useful for democracy. And what he saw on the ground was what we, the opposition, saw in the war, and have seen throughout American foreign policy in this millennium, and certainly going back to the 1990s, when America was given a free hand to do what it wanted with the world as it had become a single superpower.

06:36
The use of history and abuse of history was embedded in his speech. His insistence that all of the talk about Chamberlain appeasement is rerunning World War II, and it has been running on the theater of the American Senate nonstop for decades. And he said, it’s not the only historical analogy that we can bring up. It is a poor analogy, since Mr. Putin is not Hitler, and doesn’t have the capabilities of, the power over his people that Hitler had. And then he went on to inform us that this real analogy has to go back early in time. You have to take it back to World War I. and his understanding of World War I and how the powers stumbled into a disastrous conflict, which could have been avoided had they used diplomacy properly.

07:44
And this was his point, that history has many analogies, many lessons, and that very incredibly, his colleagues in the Senate seemed to have learned none of them. He reminded them how they had voted on that Iraq War when he was still a high school sophomore, and how they had silenced discussion and how everyone who disagreed was denounced in a kind of McCarthyite way, the very same denunciation that he sees around him today, where anyone questioning the Biden policy on Ukraine is denounced instantly as a stooge of Putin.

So, the man’s ability to navigate the arguments that you see in academic discussions, and to wed them with his own personal life experience, and with the behavior of the people around him, who he calls his colleagues and friends in the Senate — this is unusual. You know, I, we have a few very big names in the, in the academic community. There are very few. John Mearsheimer is the outstanding case. But I’ve never seen him produce the reasoning and the 360-degree view that came out in that speech by J.D. Vance. I’m really wondering who his advisors are, because I have little doubt that in many respects he’s his own advisor, because drawing on his life experience, well somebody else isn’t going to do that for you. And he’s done it himself when he did his memoirs, which were a bestseller. So I was enormously impressed.

09:37
But let me move on from that to what it means for where we’re going. Mr. Trump told us with the appointment of Vance where he’s headed, and it’s where I like to see him go. That is, I firmly believe that his remarks, that even before inauguration, he would, acting as a go-between and a broker, would find a way to end the war. I believe that. It sounded like a typical Trump exaggeration when he first said it. But seeing him in the company of Vance, I think he knows what he’s doing.

10:19
Now, I was, going back to 2016, a Trump supporter. And I made the rounds of Russian television, the talk shows, because I happened to either be in Moscow or St. Petersburg for large parts of 2016. And I was introduced by Yevgeny Popov on his then talk show, “Our Special Correspondent”. And once I was there, I made it to the other shows, all because I was viewed as somebody who could talk about, explain to a Russian audience what was going on in the States and what was the Trump phenomenon all about.

11:01
And I was a Trump supporter. I was– for only one reason. Not his domestic policy, but, where he stood on abortion or on lowering taxes and whatever. I don’t follow, as I don’t live in the United States, so his domestic policy would not concern me directly. But America’s foreign policy concerns the whole world. And therefore, I was very attentive to what he said about his foreign policy plans. These are all denounced then, they’re denounced today as isolationism, but that is rubbish. He’s not an isolationist. He simply wants to scale back the outrageous policeman’s role the United States has assumed at enormous cost and with only devastating results to show for it.

11:49
So, Trump seemed very attractive, and I was supportive in 2016. But regrettably, It very quickly became apparent that he didn’t have the– he was not a man of politics– and he didn’t have the contacts, and he didn’t have the savoir-faire, and he didn’t have the judge of people and he didn’t have the Senate. He didn’t have an ability to field a real team that could implement his policies in foreign policy and otherwise. I knew for a fact, because I knew something as an insider about the Trump organization, that yes, it’s a multi-billion dollar company, but he only had a dozen people who ran the whole show. And they were all around him. And he had them for 25 years or more, a very small circle. He never had– you think, oh yes, the company had billions. But it was not a corporation in a manufacturing sense. It was a closely held company. And yes, he managed a secretary, but he didn’t have broad experience managing tens of thousands of federal employees.

12:59
He was very ill prepared for that role, and he had nobody to help him, which is why he appointed so many of his relatives, his son-in-law was given assignments. All of this was criticized strongly at the time, but it was understandable, because he had no one else to rely on; he had family. And the result of that, all of that, is they appointed people, he got through the Senate, people who were disastrous, whether it was Tillerson as his first Secretary of State, who on paper should have been okay, coming as the head of a U.S. multinational. And then he had Pompeo. Then he had advisor Pompeo as a kind of anti-diplomat, setting us well on the course to the current administration, which is anti-diplomacy. And his other security advisors were all objectionable characters who were not sympathetic, who did not believe in his foreign policy ambitions and who undermined his policies.

14:07
So the result of the first administration of Donald Trump was in the area that interests me and I think interests the audience for this particular interview most, the policies on Russia were disaster. He was set up, of course, before he even came into the Oval Office by the actions, the outgoing actions of the Obama administration, taking away Russian consular properties and doing things which are a red flag in global diplomacy. So he had a bad start and it went downhill from there.

The whole of Trump’s time in office, relations with Russia, only went a downward spiral. The end result is even before the election of 2020, I was calling for him to be removed. I was calling for him to be impeached, not for the rubbish reasons that were given, but for the real crimes that he was committing in bombing this place and that place. And so I became an anti-Trump. In light of what I’ve seen so far in the Republican National Convention, I go back to my start position of enthusiasm for this man, for some very good reasons.

15:35
The Trump today is not the Trump of 2016, 2017. He has formed real contacts in Washington among people whom we have to respect. His choice of Vance is brilliant in this respect. All of his key appointments have to get through the Senate, and he has taken a senator to be his vice president. I understand that to mean that he will have considerable confidence that he can bring into government the people who support his policies, and not just bring into government people who can get through the Senate, which was what happened in the first Trump administration.

So for this respect, Vance is a great asset and from the speech that he made, which I found remarkable, a speech in which he objected to the funding of Ukraine– for a number of very good reasons; I won’t repeat them– I think that he is the right man to help Trump put through the foreign policy that I would like to see implemented, returning the United States to a position of engagement with the world, but one among peers, and not as the global hegemon and global policeman.

Alkhorshid: 17:09
One of the most important thing that has happened during his first term was how they could manipulate him and concentrating his attention on internal affairs, marginal affairs, just Russiagate, everything coming. Do you think he has learned something from his first term, not getting involved with these little things and just focusing on what matters the most in terms of the foreign policy of the United States?

Doctorow:
Look, Donald Trump is not a genius. He’s not a fool either, but he’s not a genius. He’s a man with definite virtues for a politician, for a statesman. I should better to call him a statesman. And that he was involved in minutiae, as you said, as minor issues. I think he was forced into that situation. The Democrats did everything possible to discredit him and to remove him with their impeachment efforts. And he was fighting for his life the whole time, his political life. And his ability to put– first of all, to find serious candidates for high positions in his cabinet was restricted. He didn’t have enough people on the ground supporting him to help him get the right people through.

18:44
And once he got the wrong people in, then he was being marginalized by the people who report to him. So, as I say, it was not a lack of intelligence. It was working against the detractors of the Democratic Party, and in the media, who did everything possible to keep him away from the levers of power. Now, the situation today, if we anticipate that he will beat Biden, it is very reasonable to assume that the Republicans will take both houses of Congress. In which case, Mr. Trump will have his every possibility to recruit and to install people of quality who will implement the policies that he has defined.

The excellent beginning is JD Vance. I think that this will attract a lot of quality people to the Trump camp. I’m very interested to see whether or not Trump will succeed in getting an endorsement from Robert Kennedy Jr. That will, of course, be very helpful. It would also not be bad if part of that endorsement came at the expense of appointing Robert Kennedy to some influential and serious post in the new administration. As I think was clear from our first talk, I was supporting Robert Kennedy, because he was the only voice against the establishment that had credibility. I did not believe Trump to be credible until this weekend.

20:38
And I have to also say that I was listening not just to one or two speeches, but to several speeches at the convention, and I was most impressed by, for example, the president of the Teamsters, who delivered an outstanding speech, very pro-labor. Obviously, the Trump wing of the Republican Party is trying very hard to position itself as pro-labor and pro-common man against the elites that have run Washington. And when you get the president of the Teamsters to come forward and deliver this magnificent speech that I heard, then I’m satisfied that Mr. Trump will get high-quality people in his new administration that he could not get in his first administration.

Alkhorshid: 21:34
Do you think that his decision to have Senator Vance as his vice president has been made before that assassination attempt or he decided after that?

Doctorow:
I would assume it was before. I don’t think– I think that there’s talk that the new Trump is not the old Trump, that this was a life-changing event. I’m sure it was a life-changing event. When you’ve been that close to death, of course. But I don’t believe that he made an appointment as important as who will be his running mate on the strength of that one event. Besides, as we know, Elon Musk had strongly recommended that he choose Vance and had backed up his recommendation with a commitment to $45 million, which isn’t bad as electoral contributions go. So, I think there were a number of factors that pointed to the naming of this particular senator as his running mate.

Alkhorshid: 22:41
When you look at Trump at the convention, you see a picture of a man that is totally different from what we’ve seen before the assassination attempt.

Doctorow:
No, I wasn’t particularly impressed that he had changed his demeanor. There were still the little nods to this end of the room, to that end of the room, and his waving here and there. This was all very much Trump style. But I do believe that once he sits in the Oval Office, he is going to be more unifying and to let his vice president be the barking dog. I think Vance– we’ve had many barking dogs as vice president, going back to Agnew, people who were doing the dirty work of their president. In the case of Vance, I don’t see him as doing dirty work. The man is much too dignified, and so I believe he’ll be a very effective debater. And I want to– just thinking about what we’ve talked about in the past few minutes– I didn’t bring out this element of Vance’s speech, which complements, fits in perfectly, with what I’ve been saying about Trump all along, though I was speaking in the desert.

24:14
What I was saying about Trump is that all of us have freedom of speech in the States that was made possible precisely by Donald Trump, by his saying things during his campaign of 2016, which we all feared, if we had said them, would invite a knock on the door from the FBI. Now, I’m very pleased to see in the speech of J.D. Vance that he made in the Senate that he is– and this also came up briefly, very briefly, in a rather fluff-like speech that he made in the convention– how he stands for debate, and how it is essential that we have a thorough discussion of issues, if we are going to arrive at a good policy.

25:00
And that, how he denounced the Democrats, rightly so, for trying to snuff out discussion and debate. And by using– he didn’t say this, call it this– but ad hominem arguments, not answering their opponents with pointing out what was wrong in what they were saying, where they were factually wrong or whatever, but denouncing them for being stooges of this and that. And as he said, this had been going on for a long time. And he went back to his own personal experience in the Iraq War period, when those who disagreed with Bush Jr. were denounced in a kind of witch hunt, in a kind of McCarthyite way. So I’m delighted to see that freedom of speech is a conscious interest and concern of Mr. Vance. And I believe that his being chosen and what he said confirms my, what I can say: that Trump gave us all freedom of speech that we do not have here in Europe.

Alkhorshid: 26:12
How– if you were to mention the Trump’s position before the attempted the assassination, and right now– how would Trump benefit from this failed assassination in 2024?

Doctorow:
You are alluding to these conspiracy theories–

Alkhorshid:
No, no, no. I’m talking about politically, how this is going to change the mind of the people who saw this happening to Trump? Right now, they’re deciding that “Let’s vote for Trump.”

Doctorow: 26:46
Well, I don’t think it’s an intellectual change as such. I think it’s an emotional change. And of course, emotions are very important in deciding how people vote. I think what it highlighted to the broad public is something that those of us who were Trumpites or who were supporters of Trump going back to 2016 understood perfectly. The man is remarkably brave. One could say in the past, if you really were being disagreeable and unkindly, that he was not brave, but he was stupid. I never believed that he was stupid. I believed from the start that he would, by saying what he said, knowing full well how the intelligence agencies, the CIA and FBI have intimidated past candidates and past presidents to watch their words. And Mr. Trump certainly must have gotten intimations of this from the heads of these agencies, that they would walk him out to the woodshed and tell him what’s what, and what he can do and what he shouldn’t do.

28:04
And he obviously didn’t listen. And he didn’t listen, again, not because he was stupid, but because he was unbelievably brave. Now, what happened there in this political, in this address, at which the assassination attempt occurred, is that the whole of America and the world saw Mr. Trump get up and raise his fist and say, fight on, when by doing that very thing, he exposed himself to a possible second sniper. He resisted, and he showed unbelievable bravery, which I think penetrated the emotional appreciation of the broad public, whether they like his policies don’t like her policies.

29:05
The contrast with the feeble and senile Biden and with the hysterical and unsupportable Kamala, this is dramatic. And yes, people vote by their minds and they also vote by their emotions. And I think the emotional capital that he stored away — unintentionally, he was just being Donald Trump and it was instinctive. It was not something that was planned. It could not be planned. This is seconds after he’s nearly killed. I think that will draw a great number of voters to him and it will shame and send home a lot of the Democrats who have slandered him.

Alkhorshid: 29:53
And when it comes to Europe, and right now we know that Orban is totally isolated because of his policies toward Russia. How Trump can help Orban and these people, these people who are not happy with the policy in Ukraine?

Doctorow;
I’m not sure that he can actively help them, but the whole of Europe understands the sympathy between Orban and Trump. And as I’ve said on other issues, everyone wants to rally around a winner. And if Orban now will be the main conduit to the incoming administration in the United States, assuming Mr. Trump wins, then without raising a finger, he will have leaders of one or another country come to his side, to be on the winning side. Ursula– I don’t know what the result is of the election that should have taken place several hours ago in the European Parliament for her re-election as the head of the commission–but whether she wins or doesn’t win will not make a great deal of difference, because I think all power will be drained away from her and from the duopoly of the Social Democrats and the European People’s Party if Trump wins.

31:28
And there will be a big movement towards Orban and his movement within the European Parliament that will take power away from the losing side, which is the present majority. So, I’m not terribly concerned about whether or not Kallas gets the final approval as the Foreign and Defence Minister, Commissioner of the European Union. I think that these people will be stripped of power, effective power. Mr. Orban will be effectively empowered and become much more attractive to his peers, to some of his peers, those who are open to realism, if there is a Trump victory.

Alkhorshid: 32:23
Orbán’s position is so important right now because not only in Ukraine, when it comes to China as well, he’s just favoring having some sort of conversation between the United States and China. And we know that Trump recently in his interview, he said that he’s not willing to do anything militarily in Taiwan. But he wants to have a economic fight with China. But that doesn’t– that’s good, that’s good if– as long as you’re interested in any sort of negotiations, that’s positive. And Orban right now in the European Union is playing a very crucial and important role.

Doctorow: 33:08
Again, he is, there’s a reason why he and Trump are soul buddies. I’ve described now my feeling that Trump is remarkably brave, and the same has to be said about Orbán. It is not easy to go up against all of your peers in the European Union who are making a fetish out of unity in pursuit of utterly disastrous policies. He is a voice of reason. I think a day will come when everyone recognizes that saying, as the Financial Times does, that he’s the biggest fan of Putin in the European Union, this kind of slander will fade away and everyone will forget who said it. And Mr. Orbán will be recognized for the realist and defender of the interests of his own people, that he is.

34:02
So his standing will rise, and their standing will fall. As I said, I’m not particularly concerned about who will be in which slot in the incoming European Commission. I firmly believe that power will ebb away from those people and will move towards those who are on the winning side over the Ukraine war and over globalism. There’s a lot, there are a lot of fragments of thinking in public space today. And I try to consolidate them and make some reason out of them, and if you allow me, I’ll do that now in a very compact way.

We hear about the Russians particularly, Mr. Putin is using every opportunity, he speaks about sovereignty. “We have intellectual sovereignty, we have cultural sovereignty, we have economic sovereignty, and of course, we are militarily secure.” That’s fine. The word sovereignty has spread out from Russia. It’s become a kind of catch word now in what used to be called the third world, and otherwise is the global south now. And the former colonies of France, in Central Africa, are also speaking about sovereignty and taking back their mineral resources and the rest of it.

35:26
Sovereignty is very good. It Is a catchword, and it makes a lot of sense, but it isn’t in a void. It comes in– it’s part and parcel of a whole understanding of of global politics. And what we’re talking about in code language is Westphalia, 1648. We’re talking about restoring nation-states to sovereignty, to a position where they are seen as defending the interests of their residents, of their citizens, and they’re protecting them against the interference of foreign powers. The interference then was the religious wars. So, the interference in countries to overturn dictators, to install Democrats, all of this is a violation of the 1648 understanding of the world, that ended the 30 Years War of religious wars, where one prince would be fighting another prince over what religion we practiced in the given territories.

36:50
That’s where we are today. So these bits and pieces in the speeches that come out today, whether they’re identifying themselves as pro-sovereignty or anti-globalism, they’re talking about the realist understanding of the world, which stands in contrast to globalism, which otherwise can be called a utopian, Wilsonian democracy, something which never really existed on earth, but existed as a battering ram for one group of politicians to smash other groups of politicians.

37:38
There are very few– realism is part of American foreign policy, but is the hidden part. The– realism is part of Russian policy, it’s not hidden at all, but is not used extensively with the general public, because the general public doesn’t like realism. It isn’t– you’re not going to sacrifice your son for realism. You’re not going to be emotionally engaged when you hear arguments made on the basis of national interest. You will sacrifice your son when you’re speaking about defending our people, defending our culture, our language. These are emotive things that people relate to. And that’s why they have been used by President Putin to explain many actions that have taken place since 2014, which really had a basis in military considerations and national interest considerations, which are another way of describing realism.

38:45
They were described instead in these different types of idealism. In America, as I said, the hidden part of foreign policy is realism, there’s some understanding of national interests, but the big public side of foreign policy is ideological, voting democracy, even if most of the people advocating it wouldn’t know democracy if they tripped on it. They really are authoritarians, particularly the authoritarian left, which has no tolerance for other people’s views since they are the unique readers of the truth.

39:33
So, as I said, the many little elements that you see in the public domain as people describe their foreign policies, they all go back to 1648, and which ended the religious wars with the general acknowledgement that princes, kings, whatever, the rulers of territories forming nation-states were the best defenders of their people, and that one state should not interfere with another state. In this world, the biggest promoters of realism with a big R are Russia and China. And the biggest promoters of ideology, fighting for democracy, and other not fine-sounding principles which are impossible to implement without causing enormous numbers of deaths and damage, they are the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union, incredibly.

Alkhorshid: 40:50
Do you feel that the rhetoric in the West, specifically in the United Kingdom right now, they’re talking about that China is the biggest threat to the United Kingdom. And nobody knows why China, what does it have to do with China? And do you understand why they’re changing the rhetoric? They’re feeling that Donald Trump is winning. Let’s go that way. Let’s put pressure on Donald Trump to go aggressive on China, maybe militarily?

Doctorow:
Well, I think it’s good that we’re getting into this discussion of Trump on China. People have also commented on Vance on China. Vance is, “Well, we can go easy on Russia. because we really have to concentrate all of our resources against China.” My take on this is: don’t believe a word of it. If considering how many warmongers there are within the Republican Party [on] Capitol Hill, it would be suicidal for Trump or anyone else to advocate a foreign policy that doesn’t have war somewhere in it.

41:57
So, we have to concentrate our resources so we can really beat the hell out of China. Everyone– and therefore we’re going to cut, we’re going to throw Ukraine under the bus. Okay. That will be fine. Throw them under the bus and let’s move on and finish off China. I don’t believe he’s going to finish off China. I believe it is a tactical maneuver now to shut up the warmongers in his own party and to let them understand that we’re going to throw Ukraine under the bus.

Alkhorshid: 42:30
And the other thing that was, if you remember during the Obama administration, they were trying, the neocons or whoever is the bloc, was trying to force Obama to go after Syria, the government in Syria. We know that how Putin’s role in just bringing some sort of peace to this conflict in Syria was so important in those days. Right now, CNN was trying to put out that Iran is behind this failed assassination of Donald Trump. It seems to me that they’re trying to make a new Iraq war in the Middle East against Iran. But how do you find Trump’s policy when it comes to Iran?

Doctorow:
Well, he didn’t bomb them. There was a real dilemma in his presidency. Would he enable Israel to deliver a deathly blow against Iran? Would the United States itself intervene and attack Iran with conventional weapons, with nuclear weapons, whatever? And he was advised not to. I believe it was Elon Musk who had a role in that. I’m not sure who was the last to have the ear of Trump before he took a decision not to bomb Iran and not to back Israel in an attack on Iran. That was of great consequence. I don’t see Trump bombing or attacking anybody. That is counter to what he said. And if he really has had a life-changing experience from this near death, I would expect it to even further strengthen this moral side of his decision-making and sensible decision-making, not to cause havoc and chaos anywhere if it can be avoided.

44:48
So, I don’t see him attacking Iran. I don’t see him attacking China. I see him doing a lot of making efforts to distract his enemies from his mission by holding a flag for his toro to run past him, and not in his administration, by agreeing verbally. Look, he backed down on the vote for funding Ukraine and Israel, finally at the last minute he backed down. So he was able to conduct himself in a tactical way for the sake of remaining on course strategically. And I believe that will occur again in the future. But I see his position on China, or certainly the position of Vance, as being just that. It is a red flag for his enemies, while [Alejandro de Herrera] stands and the bull runs past.

Alikhorshid: 46:05
Just to wrap up this session, when it comes to Israel and the conflict in Gaza, Trump, in his latest interview with, it was an Israeli media, if I’m not mistaken, he said to them that what you’re doing right now is not helping you. Everybody is just turning against you around the world. How do you see the policy of Trump and his vice president when it comes to Israel? And how they can manage the situation in Gaza?

Doctorow: 46:43
Well, I can’t give an answer to that directly in specifics. But I come back to the primary point. Trump, and particularly J.D. Vance, because he’s far more intellectual. After all, he’s a Yale Law graduate. And I’ve listened to his speech. He has a very fine working mind. So I expect that the realism that gives structure to Vance’s foreign policy statements will prevail. And it’s not a question of being pro-Israel, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, but simply realism. What can be achieved by the sides? If that enters into the present chaotic and disgraceful situation in Israel and Gaza, that will work wonders.

47:40
And I think that both of them are clever enough to find a way to explain what they’re doing to the broader public without appearing to be compromising Israel’s interests.